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V 




JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 



CHARGE 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE CLERGY 



PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH 



DIOCESE OF OHIO, 



AND AT THS TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE DIOCESE, IM 
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, STEUBENVILLE, 



SEPTEMBER 13, 1339. 

WITH AN APPENDIX. 




^51^ 



RT. REV. CHARLES P; McILVAINE, D. D. 

BISHOP OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE DIOCESE OF OHIO. 



COZiXTMBUS: 

ISAAC N. WHITING. 

M DCCC XL. 



<% 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1840, by 

Isaac N. Whiting, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of 
Ohio. 



The Library 
OF Congress 

WASHINGTON 



WESTERN CHURCH PRESS: 
PRINTED BY THOMAS R. RAYMOND, 

GamhieTy Ohio, 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



It was intended that the Appendix to thb Charge^ 
should contain an examination of the doctrine of certain 
gentlemen of the University of Oxford, recently published 
in this country, on the subject of Justification. But the 
writer has concluded that to occupy enough room for a 
proper treatment of that doctrine would too much i^efease 
the bulk of this publication. The close application^ by way 
of contrast, of the views herein expressed, to that alluded 
to, may suffice for the objects of an Episcopal Charge. — 
The Examination intended, will make a separate woiik, and* 
is nearly ready for the press. 



ERRATA. 

Page 69, 7th line from bottom, for ^'coodfemned'Unfesin,"' 
read, concluded under sin. 

Page 7J, 2d line from bottom, for ^* Besu?e,'* read, .Be sure. 

Page 81, 3d line from bottom, in some ©opi,eB>,for ^'sanc- 
tification," read, satisfaction. 

Page 89, note, for "c. v.," read, b. v. 

Page 103, note, in some copies, for ** virtare,'* read, mrtu^y. 

Page 131, 10th line from top, in some capies,,for "sanctL- 
^cation,'' read, satisfaction. 



PREFACE 



It is due to the Convention, at whose request 
this Charge is published, to say that although, 
in its present form, it contains many pages 
which were not connected with it as delivered ; 
nothing has been added, in point of doctrine, 
which was not substantially before the Conven- 
tion when the publication was requested. The 
unexpected delay in the issue from the press, 
has arisen from the desire of the author to make 
such arrangements with a publisher, as would 
relieve the Diocese from much of the expense of 
the edition. — It has been said that the Charge 
was directed against the Oxford Tracts. The 
fact is adverted to, because otherwise it might 
cause a misinterpretation of some detriment to 
the object of the writer. Doubtless the peculiar- 
ities of the recent Oxford divinity, on the subject 



VI 

of Justification, were often in view in the writing 
of the Charge ; and the author has no question 
that there is serious error enough in that divini- 
ty, on this one subject, to furnish subject-matter 
for much more than an Episcopal Charge ; but 
the reader will be disappointed if he expects to 
trace a reference thereto in every part of this 
publication. Distinctly to exhibit certain main 
truths involved in the great matter of a sinner's 
Justification before God, and to point out certain 
main errors in that connection, has been the sin- 
gle object of the writer. 



CHARGE. 



Brethren in the Holy Ministry : 

In considering by what means I might 
best promote the usefulness of our pres- 
ent Convention, I have been led to sup- 
pose that a Charge on some of the great 
duties of your high calling, would be 
seasonable and welcome. The selection 
however of some single and well-defined 
subject, has been the difficulty; not that 
appropriate subjects are scarce, but be- 
cause from the fewness of the occasions 
on which we thus address you, those 
which seem importunately to claim a 
conspicuous introduction, are so numer- 
ous and various. 

But in reflecting upon the duties of 
the Episcopate as exercised by that emi- 



8 

nent example of all ministerial faithful- 
ness, the Apostle St. Paul, his earnest 
charges to ministers as to their doc- 
triney occurred to my mind; — such as 
those in which Timothy is directed to 
** give attendance to reading, to exhor- 
tation, to doctriney^ to ^^ rebuke and ex- 
hort with all long-suffering diwdi doctrine ;^^ 
**in doctrine shewing uncorruptness, gra- 
vity, sincerity ;" especially that in which 
he is enjoined to ^^take heed^^ to his doc-^ 
trinCy as well as to himself, because in so 
doing he should both save himself and 
those that heard him. These, as well as 
similar passages in the Epistle to Titus, 
afford an impressive example to those 
who have succeeded, not indeed to the 
name, but essentially to the office of the 
Apostles, of the concern they should feel 
and the care they should take, that the 
ministers over whom they are placed in 
the Lord, should not only be well ground- 
ed in sound doctrine, but so faithful 
and well skilled in setting it forth, clearly, 
forcibly and fully, to the understanding 



and conscience and heart, that their 
hearers may be ** rooted and built up in 
Christ and stablished in the faith/^ This 
example, I desire, my beloved brethren, 
as much as in me lies, to imitate. Feel- 
ing a very deep sense of the importance 
of having our several flocks accurately 
and firmly indoctrinated^ as well for the 
consistency, fruitfulness and steadfastness 
of individual Christians, as for the perma- 
nent interests of true rehgion in the 
whole church, I would urge upon myself 
and you, the duty of giving great heed to 
Christian doctrine in general; but most 
particularly to those prominent parts of 
the doctrine of Christ on which the spirit- 
ual life and power of the Church and he? 
ministry most essentially depend; and 
this, not only that we may be well estab- 
lished in the truth and well furnished for 
its defence, with sound speech that cannot 
be condemned ; but that we may fully 
teach sound doctrine ; that our preaching 
may be decidedly doctrinal, as well as 
practical; never attempting to enforce 



10 

christian practice without joining it close, 
ly with christian doctrine, as alone fur- 
nishing its reason and principles. 

That I may contribute something to 
your furtherance in this, I have selected 
for the subject of this charge the doctrine 
of Justification hy Faith; one which you 
all know is of the most vital importance 
in the system of Gospel truth, and should 
therefore receive the careful study of all 
whose office it is to teach the way of sal- 
vation. Not only do I most fully believe 
in the doctrine of Justification by Faith, 
as the Scriptures, on that subject, are in- 
terpreted in the standards of our Church ; 
but I do also beheve that it is of the very 
highest importance to all efficiency in a 
minister, that he should exhibit it, line 
upon line, precept upon precept, here a 
little and there a little, sometimes at 
large, in some extent habitually, and 
always with reference to the enforcement 
of precisely those main points of the 
doctrine, on which the Church, in her 
Articles and Homilies, has most emphati- 



11 

cally insisted. It is a great thing gained 
when a minister has acquired the knowl- 
edge and the skill, as well as the spirit, to 
do this. Always should he be studying 
the improvement of his ministry in this 
main branch of its message. Here may 
we all be learners, as long as the personal 
experience of the blessedness of divine 
truth shall have any more spiritual dis- 
cernment to impart, or the personal ob- 
servation of man shall have any more 
knowledge of the relative bearing of the 
gospel upon the varied conditions of the 
human mind and heart to communicate. 
Not counting myself to have already at- 
tained any thing on this subject, that may 
not be equally possessed by many of you, 
my dear brethren, who have had much 
experience in the ministry; feeling my 
mind indeed entirely settled in the doc- 
trine, but desiring, as heretofore, so 
always hereafter, to be improving in the 
method of illustrating and enforcing it ; 
my whole object in this charge will be, 
not the teaching of what you may^'not be* 



12 

supposed substantially to know already; 
not the correction of any errors on this 
subject supposed to exist among you; 
but, knowing your substantial agreement 
with the doctrine as declared in the 
Scriptures, and embodied in the standard 
writings of the Church ; my object will 
be answered if I can contribute to make 
any of you not only more deeply sensible 
of the relative importance of this doc- 
trine in your ministry, and very earnest 
to get the clearest views of it in all its 
parts and connections ; but also more dis- 
criminating in your views, more lucid in 
your statements, more direct and im- 
pressive in your applications, more effec- 
tive for the highest objects of your office, 
in your whole method of preaching to 
sinners, " the way, the truth, the life,'' 
""Hhe Lord J our Righteousness.^^ 

The main endeavour of this discourse 
will be, to illustrate the doctrine of Scrip- 
^urCy as interpreted and declared in the 
standards of our Churchy on the more 
prominent topics involved m^A/? Sinner's 
Justification before God, 



13 



On no point of doctrinal confession, 
are the declarations of the Church more 
full, more reiterated, or more earnest. 
There is first, an Article, entitled, " Of 
the Justification of Man^^^ in which the 
doctrine is summarily declared, in these 
words: " We are accounted righteous he-* 
fore God, only for the merit of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ, hy Faith, and 
not for our own works and deservings.^^ 
And then on the subject of ^^our own 
works and deservings,^^ as rejected from 
Justification, we have two more Articles ; 
the one entitled, ^'Of Works done before 
Justificaticm,^^ which excludes them from 
all efficacy to make men meet to receive 
grace, or deserve it *^o/* congruity^^ be- 
cause ^'not pleasant to God, forasmiwh as 
they spring not of Faith in Jesu^ Christ, 
and have the nature of sin;^^ the other, of 
^^Wcyrks which are the Fruits of Faith, 
and FOLLOW after Justification ; '^ declar- 
ing that though the necessary results of a 
lively faith, and pleasing to God in Christ, 
they ^^ cannot put away our sim.^^ 



14 



Thus have three distinct Articles been 
expended on this subject. 

But the Framers of our Confession 
were not content with this. They re- 
garded the doctrine of ^'Justification, by 
which, of unjust, we are made just be- 
fore God,'' as 'Hhe st7'ong rock and foun- 
dation of Christian religionJ'^ * The his- 
tory of all the subtle devices by which 
Satan had in every age endeavored to 
undermine that ''rock," was before them. 
The war, then at its height, with the 
corruptions of Romanism; the Council 
of Trent, then sitting and fulminating 
its Anathemas against the holders of the 
truth, secured their due remembrance of 
that history. It taught them the neces- 
sity of greater minuteness of declaration 
than was contained in the Articles above 
named. Homilies were therefore used 
for larger exposition. The Article on 
Justification refers the reader for a fuller 
view of the faith of the Church, to ''the 
Homily of Justification-^'^ The Homily 

^ Homily ef Salvatkrn, Part ii. 



15 



entitled ^^On the salvation of mankind],, 
hy only Christ our Savioiir^^* i% by uni- 
versal acknowledgment, the one referred 
to; though it is not known by what 
means, or when, its title was changed 
from that given in the Article. But this 
is not the only homiletic exposition bear- 
ing upon the subject. The doctrine of 
the Church on Faith^ and also on Good 
WbrkSy is essentially connected with that 
of Justification. We have therefore a 
standard Homily on each; so that there 
are three Homilies or Sermons, each in 
three parts, all asserted in our 35th Arti- 
cle to ^'contain a godly and wholesome 
doctrine ;^^ "all of which together com- 
pose and make a treatise on Justification,,, 
and all of which are to be referred to for 
explaining the sense of the Church in her 
Article on that subject.'* * 

Now, with these combined and minute 
expositions, so remarkable for precision 
of language and perspicuity of illustra- 
tion^ formed too with particular reference 

* Ridley's Life of Ridley, p. 344. 



16 



to the very points on which errors have 
arisen, it would seem impossible that the 
sense of the Church should be mistaken. 

But a recollection of the particular 
models and men^ most referred to in the 
construction of these formularies, as well 
as of those particular corruptions of the 
truth against which they were aimed, if 
it may not make their meaning more ob- 
vious, will at least render it more emphatic 
and impressive. 

Of the Articles which were framed in 
1551, and which, on the subjects involved 
in this discourse, the changes in the reign 
of Elizabeth did not materially affect, 
* ^Archbishop Cranmer must be considered 
as the sole compiler.'' * Of the first book 
of Homilies, with which chiefly we are 
concerned in this Charge, the same Refor- 
mer is believed, by the best authorities, 
to have been the chief composer, as was 
Jewell of the second. But the Homilies 
on Salvation, Faith, and Good works, to 
which the Article of Justification is espe^ 

* Soame's Hist, of the Reform., vol. iii. 648. Strype's 
Life of Cranmer, b. ii., c. xxvii. 



17 

€ially related, are without a question as- 
cribed exclusively to Cranmer.* Now it 
is well known that a frequent correspond- 
ence on the most important matters of 
the Reformation was kept up between 
him and the continental Divines, espe- 
cially Melancthon. The latter was par- 
ticularlj^ consulted on the subject of the 
Articles, and is known to have urged, for 
a model, the Confession of Augsburgh.t 
Hence the Articles of the English Church 
^'chiefly derive their origin fromLutheran 
Formularies. Some of them are drawn 
from the Confession of Augsburgh, others 
from that of Wittemberg, known as the 
Saxon Confession, and professedly drawn 
up in strict accordance with that of Augs- 
burgh."t *' The truth of the matter is, 
(says Le Bas,) that the English Reform- 
ers framed their Articles not as a wall of 

* Tomline's Elements of Theology, ii, 535. Soame, iii. 
63. Todd on the 39 Art. pref. p. xi. Strype's Cranmcr,. 
b. ii. c. ill. 

t Strype's Life of Granmer, b. iii,, c. xxiv. A son of " 
Justus Jonas, the friend and fellow-labourer of Luther and 
Melancthon, resided with Cranmer and seems ta have been 
his chief medium of correspondence with the Lutherans.^ 
Lawrence s Bumpton Lectures^ p. 210. 

t Soame, iii. p. 652. 

a 



18 

partition between Protestant and Prot- 
estant, but as a bulwark against the per- 
versions with which the scholastic theol- 
ogy had disfigured the simplicity of the 
Gospel. — The only key therefore which 
can readily unlock the true sense of the 
Articles, is a knowledge, not of the 
opinions which afterwards rent the Prot- 
estant community into fragments, — but 
of the papal doctrines against which the 
main struggle of the reformers had been 
carried on from the very first/' '* If any 
person could but sit down to the perusal 
of our Articles, in utter forgetfulness 
that Europe had ever been seriously agi. 
tated by the Calvinistic dispute, and with 
nothing in his mind but the controversy 
between Reformed Churches and the 
Church of Rome, he would then clearly 
perceive that those Articles were con- 
structed for the most part on the Luther- 
an system and principally as a rampart 
against the almost unchristian theology 
of the schools/'* This was emphatically 

* Le Bas' Life of Cranmer. See also Lawrence's Bamptou 
Lectures; Blunt' s Reformation in England. 



19 

the case as respects the doctrine now 
under consideration. Thus we have two 
very important auxiliaries, in case of any 
difficulty in understanding the precise 
meaning of our standard compositions on 
this subject. The writings of Luther 
and his associates, especially of Melanc- 
thon, together with the Augsburgh Con- 
fession, which the latter composed, from 
materials prepared by Luther, are one of 
them. The doctrines of the Church of 
Rome, on the subject of Justification, 
are another, and not the least to be relied 
on. From the first, we may draw some 
collateral aid in this discourse ; the latter 
we now proceed to employ. 

What then was that doctrine of Ro- 
manism, on Justification, against which 
our Church protested? In the authentic 
summary of the decrees of the Council 
of Trent, it is declared that we are jus- 
tified, not by a Righteousness accounted 
or imputed to us, and which otherwise 
would not be ours ; but hy a MighteouS' 
ness^ ** INHERENT IN usj" and because 



20 

inherent^ a righteousness which is dis- 
tinctly called, by the Council, ""'our own 
proper Righteousness ^^^ and with the works 
of which, the justified ^'can satisfy the 
divine law^^^ and ^Hruly merit the attain- 
ment of eternal life.^^ But this inherent 
righteousness, though thus ''our own 
proper righteousness^''' "\^ not so determin- 
ed to be our own, as if it were from our- 
selves," but is also ^^the Righteousness 
of God^ because it is infused into us 
of God^ through the Merit of ChristJ"'* 

Thus ''our awn proper Righteousness ^'^ 
inwrought and inherent in us^ is the mer- 
itorious ground of our Justification before 
God, according to the Church of Rome. 
It is wrought in us indeed by God, and 
in that sense is not our's, but His. But 
quite as much was the righteousness of 
Adam, before he fell, wrought in him 
of God. Nevertheless, had Adam con- 
tinued unfallen, he would have been jus- 
tified in the strictest sense, hy works, by 
his own merits and righteousness. To 

* ConciL Trident, sess. vi. c. 16. 



21 

speak therefore of ^^our own proper 
righteousness'' as being God's, because 
He made it, does not in the least pro- 
tect the Church of Rome from the charge 
of maintaining that our own righteous- 
ness or merit is, in the strictest sense, 
the efficient cause of otir Justification 
before God.* Hence the great dividing 
line between Protestants and Romanists, 
on this subject, is thus stated by Bishop 
Hall: '^The Papists make this inherent 
righteousness the cause of our Justifica- 
tion ; the Protestants, the effect thereof. 
The Protestants require it as a compan- 
ion, the Papists, as the parent of Justi- 
fication."t To the same purpose speaks 
Archbishop Usher: ^^The question be- 
tween us and Rome is not whether we are 
justified by faith, but whether we are 
justified at all. There are two graces; 
righteousness imputed, which implies for- 
giveness of sins ; and righteousness inhe- 
rent, which is the grace of sanctification 

* For further evidence see citations in Usher's Answer to 
ft Jesuit, c. xii. 
t Works, 8 vo. ix. p. 46-7, 



22 

begun. They utterly deny that there is 
any righteousness, but righteousness in^ 
herent. They say forgiveness of sins is 
nothing but sanctification. A new doc- 
trine, never heard of in the Church of 
God till these last days, till the spawn 
of the Jesuits devised it/'* Let us hear 
the judicious Hooker on this head. — 
'^Wherein (he says) do we disagree?" 
[with Romanists.] "We disagree about 
the nature and essence of the medicine 
whereby Christ cureth our disease ; about 
the manner of applying it; about the 
number and power of means which God 
requirethin us for the effectual applying 
thereof to our souls' comfort. When 
they are required to shew what the right- 
eousness is whereby a Christian man is 
justified, they answer that it is a divine 
spiritual quality ; which is termed Grace. 
This they will have to be applied by infu- 
sion ; that as the body is warm by the 
heat which is in the body, so the soul 
might be righteous by inherent Grace ; 

* Usher's Sermor^ on Justification. 



23 

which Grace they make capable of in- 
crease, that as the body may be made 
more and more warm, so the soul, more 
and more justified, according as Grace 
should be augmented ; the augmentation 
whereof is merited by good works, as 
good works are made meritorious by it. 
Wherefore the first receipt of Grace, in 
their divinity, is the first Justification ; 
the increase thereof, the second Justifica- 
tion. If they work more and more, 
Grace doth more increase, and they are 
more and more justified." This is Hook- 
er's account of what he calls 'Hhe mys- 
tery of the man of sin^^ and ^' Babylon ;^^ 
and which, he prays, may fall before 
God's truth, "as Dag on before the Ark.'*^ 
This it was which, in the great revolt of 
the 1 6th century, against the usurpations 
of Popery, combined the whole Protest- 
ant host in one array of indignant oppo- 
sition. " This (says Usher) is that 
doctrine of merits, which from our very 
hearts we detest and abhor, as utterly 

* Discourse of Just iiication j, \ v. 



24 

repugnant to the truth of God and the 
common sense of all true-hearted christ^ 
ians.'^^ This was the head of Antichrist 
against which the Articles and Homilies 
of the Reformed Church of England so 
earnestly levelled their solemn protests, 
and repeated declarations ; this explains 
their emphatic earnestness whenever the 
subject of human merit or of the right- 
eousness of God, by faith, occurs, and is 
to be borne prominently in mind, by all 
who would take the full force of our 
doctrinal standards on the subject before 
us. Here it is well to observe, distinct- 
ly, that what aroused the solemn protest 
of the reformed churches of Europe, was 
not that the Church of Rome, in her 
doctrine of justification, had gone so far 
as professedly to renounce all reliance upon 
the merits of Christy and substitute the 
inherent righteousness and merits of the 
sinner, without a pretence of any thing 
better. This furthest reach of heresy 
she did not venture. The merits of 

* Answer to a Jesuit, c. vU. 



25 

Christ and the office of faith were pro- 
fessedly retained. And while she did 
declare that '''the righteous can satisfy ike 
divine law by their own worhs^ and may 
truly merit the attainment of eternal life ;^^ 
and that ''our own proper Righteousness y 
inherent in us^ is that for which ive are 
justifiedj^' she took care to qualify her 
language by saying that the works by 
which the righteous satisfy the divine 
law '' are performed in God;^ that our in- 
herent and justifying righteousness, ''is 
the Righteousness of God^ because infused 
into us by God^ through the merit of 
Christ;^' and that it should be '^far from 
a christian that he should either trust or 
glory in himself and not in the Lord ; 
whose goodness to all men is so great, 
that what are truly His gifts, he willeth 
to be estimated as their merits/'* 

Here indeed were specious words, for 
the deceiving of the unwary ; but regar- 
ded by the Reformers as a mere drapery 

* Trident, sess. vi., c. 16, p. 54. 



26 

of pious form cast over a foul body, to 
hide its more odious deformities. It was 
the single pretence of the sinner's own 
merits or righteousness^ entering into the 
justification of his soul before God, that 
kindled their united and stern hostility. 
To tell them that only a part of justifica- 
tion was assigned to the sinner's own 
merit, and the rest to Christ, was of no 
avail to turn the edge of their remon- 
strance. It was enough that human mer- 
it^ in any degree, however obtained, was 
permitted to come into the least connec- 
tion with justification, ''To say that a 
man 'for his meritorious works receiveth, 
through God's grace, the bliss of ever- 
lasting happiness,' is to speak flat contra- 
rieties, and to conjoin those things that 
cannot possibly be coupled together. For 
that conclusion of Bernard is most cer- 
tain: ' There is no place for grace to en- 
ter, where merit hath taken possession,' 
because it is founded upon the Apostle's 
determination : ^Ifit he of grace^ it is no 



27 

more of works ; else were grace no more 
grace.'* '^* Such was the doctrine of the 
Reformation every where. The professed 
union of the merit of man with that of 
Christ ; this pretended sewing of the new 
garment of the Saviour's righteousness to 
the old polluted thing of the sinner's own, 
they unitedly regarded as a virtual rejec- 
tion of all the saving benefits of the Sav- 
iour's love, and a perfect exclusion of 
grace from the way of salvation. In their 
view, it was a direct and sacrilegious re- 
versing of the method of St. Paul. He 
said^'izo^' having on mine own righteous- 
ness^ bitt that which is through the faith 
of Christy the righteousness which is of 
Gody through faiths The Church of 
Rome said, on the contrary, not having 
on the righteousness which is through the 
faith of Christy but that which is '^our 
own proper righteousness," inherent in 
us, by vfhich we truly merit eternal life, 
and which is the righteousness of God, 
only because it is wrought in us by God-^ 

* Usher's Answer to a Jesuit, e. xii., p. 472. 



28 

Thus was " the cross of Christ of none 
effect." For says Hooker to this very 
point, ''whether they speak of the first 
or second Justification, they make the 
essence to be of a divine quahty inherent; 
they make it righteousness which is in us. 
If it be in us, then it is ours, as our 
souls are ours, though we have them from 
God and can hold them no longer than 
pleaseth him ; for if he withdraw the 
breath of our nostrils we fall to dust, but 
the righteousness wherein we must be 
found if we v/ill be justified, is not our 
own ; therefore we cannot be justified by 
any inherent quality."* 

And here, let it be well observed, that 
this doctrine of Justification by inherent 
righteousness, and of Justification in- 
creased by the good works proceeding 
therefrom, and increasing more and more 
as good works increase ; this was regard- 
ed, not as only a part of Popery ; as one 
of the numerous deformities of that sys- 
tem, which our Church does not scruple 

* Discourse of Justification, $vi. 



29 

to treat with the name of Antichrist ;* 
not a mere companion of her purgatory, 
and her indulgences, and her image- 
worship, and such like ; but by the great 
lights of the Protestant world in the days 
of the Reformation, it was considered as 
the great sin, the parent sin, the head 
and heart of Antichrist, out of which all 
her unholy desires and bad counsels and 
unjust works did proceed. Thus, in the 
sight of Luther, the doctrine of Justifi- 
cation was the one great point to be made 
for Reformation of the Church from the 
corruptions of Romanism: ''the Article 
bi/ tvhich a Church must stand orfalL^^f 
Calvin maintained " that if this one head 
might be yielded safe and entire, it would 
not pay the cost to make any great quar- 
rel about other matters in controversy with 
Rome/'t Our own Homily, on this sub- 
ject, is of the same mind as to the prime 
offence of that Church, declaring that 

* Homily of Good Works, Part iii. 

t See Luther's extraordinary assertion of this Doctrine, 
in Scott's Continuation of Milner's Church History, vol. l,, 
p. 98. 

tBp. Hall's Polemical Works, 8vo., p. 44-5. 



30 

to be ''the greatest arrogancy and pre* 
sumption of man that Antichrist could 
set up against God, to affirm that a man 
might by his own works take away and 
purge his own sins, and so justify him- 
self.'^* And in proof of all this, Hooker 
gives us the legitimate pedigree of this 
'' mother of abominations," showing how 
the various generations, in the house and 
lineage of Romish corruptions, have all 
their parentage here, and without this 
would never have been born. He begins 
with the two Justifications of Popish di- 
vinity — the Ji7'sfy taking place on the 
first infusion of inherent righteousness ; 
the second, on the increase thereof in 
good Avorks. Then he says that, as this 
Justification may be increased by good 
works, diminished by venial sins, lost|by 
mortal sins, so that it is needful in one 
case to repair it, in the other to recover 
it ; *' the infusion of grace hath her sun- 
dry after-meals ; for the which cause they 
make many ways to apply the infusion of 

* Homily on Salvation, Part ii. 



t? 



31 

grace. It is applied to infants through 
Baptism, without either Faith or Works. 
It is appUed to infidels and wicked men 
in the first Justification, through Baptism 
without works, yet not without faith ; and 
it taketh away both sins actual and origi- 
nal together, wdth all whatsoever punish- 
ment temporal or eternal, thereby deser- 
ved. To such as diminish it by venial 
sins, it is applied by Holy Water, Ave 
Marias, Crossings, Papal Salutations, and 
such like, which serve for reparations of 
grace decayed. To such as have lost it, 
through mortal sin, it is applied by the 
sacrament, as they term it, of Penance, 
which sacrament hath force to confer 
grace anew,*' yet it only changes the pun- 
ishment of sin from eternal to temporal 
here in this life, if there be time ; but if 
not, to temporal punishment hereafter, 
'^ except it be lightened by Masses, Works 
of Charity, Pilgrimages, Fasts and such 
like, or else shortened by pardon of term, 
or by plenary pardon quite removed and 
taken away. This is the mystery of the 



32 

Man of Sin» This maze the Church of 
Rome doth cause her followers to tread, 
when they ask her the way to Justifica- 
tion."* This, we add, is the Babel of 
wood, hay and stubble, whose top reach- 
es unto heaven, and invokes the anger of 
God against the builders who have so set 
at nought 'Hhe head-stone of the corner," 
and despised ''the foundation of the 
Apostles and Prophets." 

But stronger still is the author of our 
Homily and Article on Justification. No 
where does Archbishop Cranmer exclaim 
with such indignation against Popery as 
when he remembers her doctrine of hu- 
man merit. Hear his solemn condemna- 
tion! ''O heinous blasphemy and most 
detestable injury against Christ ! O wick- 
ed abomination in the temple of God ! 
O pride intolerable of Antichrist, and 
most manifest token of the son of perdi- 
tion, extolling himself above God, and 
with Lucifer, exalting his seat and power 
above the throne of God ! For he that 

* Discourse of Justification, $ v. 



33 

taketh upon him to supply that thing, 
which he pretendeth to be imperfect in 
Christ, must needs make himself above 
Christ, and so very Antichrist. For what 
is this else, but to be against Christ, and 
to bring him into contempt? As one, 
that either for lack of charity would not, 
or for lack of power, could not, with all 
his blood-shedding and death, clearly de-^ 
liver his faithful and give them remission 
of sins ; but that the full perfection there- 
of must be at the hands of Antichrist of 
Rome and his ministers."* 

But, n>y Brethren, it is not for any at- 
tack upon the Church of Rome, that I 
have recalled these things ; but because 
it is salutary sometimes to renew the im- 
pressions they are so calculated to make 
as to the main point of evangelical truth 
for which our fathers of the Reformation 
contended, and thus to revive our sense 
of responsibility for the safe keeping of 
the truth which they were made the hon- 

* Cranmer's Book on the Sacrament, 
3 



34 

oured instruments of rescuing from the 
devices of Satan. 

What the human heart under the insti- 
gation of the great Adversary of the 
Gospel, has once done against the truth, 
it can do again. Justification by inherent 
righteoiisness or human merit, was no 
invention of Romanism. It is indeed 
the peculiar distinction of the Church of 
Rome, to be the first and only one of the 
great sections of Christendom that has 
embodied into formally professed declara- 
tions, the fiction of such a righteousness ; 
and especially, that has pronounced anath- 
ema upon whoever should profess the 
opposite;* but in this as in all her other 
corruptions of religion, "the spirit of 
Romanism is substantially the spirit of 
Human Nature. Its errors will be found 

* /* If any one shall say that men are justified, either by 
imputation of Christ's righteousness alone, oi only by re- 
mission of sins, to the exclusion of grace and charity; or 
that the grace by which we are justified is the favour of God 
alone ; let him be accursed,'* 

<*If any one shall say that righteousness received (Justifi- 
cation) is not preserved and tven increased before God by good 
works; but that these works are only fruits and signs of jus- 
tification, and not the cause of increasing it, let him be accur- 
sed." — Condi. Trident,, sess. vi., canons xi. and xxiv. 



35 

to be the natural and spontaneous growth 
of the human heart; not so much the ef- 
fect as the cause of the Romish system 
of reUgion, No one accordingly can 
point out any precise period at which this 
'mystery of iniquity* first began, or spe- 
cify any person who first introduced it; 
no one in fact ever did introduce any such 
system; the corruptions crept in one by 
one, and gradually changed her bridal 
purity for the accumulated defilements of 
the mother of harlots/'* They grew out 
of that universal disposition of mankind 
which leads them ^'togo about establishing 
their own righteousness ^ not submitting 
the^nselves to the righteousness of God,^* 
Of that disposition, Romanism is just 
the direct and multiform consequence ; 
the most systematic, gigantic and avowed 
developement.t What we behold full 

* Archbishop Whately, on the Origin of Romish Errors. 

t What a confession is that of Bellarmine, the great ex- 
positor and champion of Romanism, to this point ! *'In 
answer to that argument of ours, that after we are acquit of 
our sins at this bar, and that only for Christ, our only right- 
o'usness, we are received into God's favour, &c., and then 
have Heaven by way of inheritance; he answereth directly — 
their meaning is not to content themselves with that single 



36 

grown and developed under the hideous 
proportions, the bold frontlet, and the 
"scarlet" drapery of that predicted " man 
of sin^ who sitteth as God in the temple 
of God,"* was born into this world thou- 
sands of years before Christianity began. 
Justification by human merits was the 
device of Satan as soon as enmity was 
first put between the serpent and the wo- 
man, and his seed and her seed. It was 
the distinguishing feature of the sacrifice 
of Cain, and in him led to the first per- 
secution and the first martyrdom for the 
faith. Under the form of the righteous- 
ness of the Scribes and Pharisees, it grew 
into a compacted system and made the 
commandment of God of none effect, by 
the traditions of the Elders, under the 
Jewish dispensation, just as under the 
Christian, it has done the same, by the 
traditions of the Romanists, * teaching 
for doctrines, the commandments of 

title of inheritance; but they mean to claim it, dvplici jure. 
That is not only titulo hcBreditatis, hut jure mercedis too. And 
he gives this reason — For that it is more for their honour^ to 
have it by merit, ' Magis honorificum est, habere aliquid €X 
merito,' "— Bp. Andrews' Sermons, fol. p» 728. 
* 2 Thess. ii., 3, 4. 



37 

men/'* It was this, among the chris- 
tians of Galatia, against which St. Paul 
was contending, when he asked: ''Are 
ye so fooHsh? Having begun in the Spir- 
it, are ye now made perfect by the flesh ?"t 
Always has it been a chief ruler of the 
darkness of this world. It was not left 
to be confined within the fold of Roman- 
ism, because the Reformed branded 
it with their solemn Protest. It forsook 
not the hearts of the people when it was 
cancelled from the standards of their 
faith. It abode with them as a plague, 
because they carried with them the cor- 
ruption of their fallen nature. Under 
divers shapes, has it often since appeared 
in Protestant communities, and in the 
writings and ministry of Protestant di- 

* A famous Jesuit (Serarius) writes thus, in great earnest: 
** The Pharisees may not unfitly be compared to our Catholics.'' 
On which singular piece of truth- speaking, the good old Up. 
Hall says: *' Some men speak truth ignorantly; some un- 
wittingly: Caiaphas never spake truer when he meant it not. 
One egg'is not liker to another, than the Tridentine Fathers 
to these Pharisees in point of Traditions. Some Traditions 
(he adds with a wholesome Avisdom '^necessary for these 
times'^ ) must have place in every church; but their place: 
They may not take wall of Scripture: substance may not, 
in our valuation, give way to circumstance. God forbid !" 
— Works J 8vo. voL v., ^. 14. 

t Gal. iii. a 



38 

vines. From the doctrine of Scripture, 
on this subject, which stands as a sum- 
mit-level and dividing ridge, like the 
ancient Church in the mountains of Pied- 
mont,*^ between the opposite declivities 
that terminate in the two extremes of 
Atheism and Popery, the currents of per- 
nicious error, heading in the same vicini- 
ty, have ever been flowing, under the 
guidance of adventitious circumstances, 
in opposite directions; some towards the 
German Sea of Universal Scepticism; 
others towards the Italian Gulph of Uni- 
versal Superstition ; both meeting at last 
in a common war against the truth, for 
the shipwreck of the Gospel. Thus it 
is, that according as circumstances have 
operated to give the one direction or the 
other to error, the doctrine of merit, 
whether by the inherent grace^ or the ex- 
tenial work of righteousness, has appeared 
under such opposite forms ; sometimes in 

* The Church of Piedmont, however depressed, never 
ceased to bear witness to the true doctrine of Justification. 
"Connecting itself by a long line of succession with the 
primitive ages, it may claim the high and extraordinary 
praise of not being a Reformed Church, simply because it 
required not reformation." — Filler's Romanism, app., 2d ed. 



39 

the shape of a dead and ice-bound Ra- 
tionalism ; at other times, in the monas- 
tic garb and fervent zeal of a solemn 
Mysticism; now proceeding towards the 
rejection of all Mediation and Atone, 
ment, and to a proud dependence on its 
own foundation for peace with God ; now 
tending to the multiplication of atone- 
ments and mediators, in voluntary penan- 
ces and additional observances and prayers 
of saints ; one while setting at nought all 
external things in the worship of God, 
as carnal ordinances, fit only for the in- 
fancy of religion, and caring for nothing 
but a certain mystic indwelling of God, 
for reconciliation^ as well as holiness ; at 
another time, rejecting all inward and 
spiritual grace, as enthusiasm, and rest- 
ing in outward forms and observances as 
the fulfilment of all righteousness. Now, 
as ever, among all classes of Christians, 
is this essential spirit of Romanism — self- 
righteousness — the popery of the un- 
converted heart, the last enemy to be 
vanquished in bringing a sinner to accept 



40 

the grace of God in Christ; the last 
plague to disturb the peace of the true 
disciple, and hinder his progress in ho- 
liness. 

Brethren, suppose not that there is 
not very much of the operative spirit of 
popery among all communities and under 
all names of Protestants. No confessions 
of faith ; no terms of communion ; no 
tests of discipleship, can fence it out. 
The old soil of its birth remains. Satan 
can cast his devices over all our barriers. 
What if we go not to auricular confes- 
sion ; nor trust in a Priest's absolution ; 
nor bow down to graven images ; nor 
pray to angels and the Virgin and all 
departed saints ; nor draw upon a treas- 
ury of the superfluous merits of the faith- 
ful, committed to the keys of the successor 
of St. Peter, for the supply of the defi- 
ciencies of the living and the dead ? All 
these things we may hate, as marks of 
Antichrist. Purgatory and Transubstan- 
tiation and Papal Infallibility and Romish 
claims of exclusive Catholicity may kin- 



41 

die us into strong aversion at the bare 
naming of their names. But can there 
be no plague-spot of popery, where these 
are rejected? no poisonous fountain till 
it run over in all these streams? no head 
and heart of Anrichrist, without these 
its limbs? Yes, the very soul of Popery 
— that which alone hath ^^ power to give 
life unto the image of the beast,"* and 
which alone does give value to its indul- 
gences, and room to its purgatory, and 
need to its sacrament of penance, and 
motive to the employment of its number- 
less intercessors; that, into which all the 
rest of popery has struck its roots, and 
without which it could not possibly have 
subsisted ; — inherent righteousness and 
human merit as having any — the least 
part in the justification of a sinner before 
God; — this maybe in us; and this is the 
soul of Popery; and however alone it 
should be, at its first appearance among 
us, would need but a generation or two 
to do its work, and you should see it dis- 

* Rev. xiii. 15. 



42 

playing its legitimate offspring under all 
the forms of a manifest Romanism ; the 
names, perhaps, new ; the shrines, prot- 
estant ; the whole externalism, presented 
in a corrected edition ; but from the same 
cause, the same substantial effects pro- 
ceeding: genuine popery^ though dis- 
guised, peradventure, as an angel of 
light. The grand security, under God, 
of any Church, against corruptions es- 
sentially the same as those of Romanism, 
is its being thoroughly indoctrinated and 
animated with the blessed truth that ''^we 
are accounted righteous before Gody only 
for the merit of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christy by faith^ and not for our 
own works or deservingsT Let this once 
be substituted for the doctrine of the 
Church of Rome, and how soon would 
the whole ** maze in which she leads her 
followers" be disentangled! the whole 
Babel confounded ! This it was that did 
the glorious work in the sixteenth centu- 
ry, forasmuch as it spake to the con- 
science, reached the heart, gave ^'liberty 



4S 

to the captive and the opening of the 
prison doors to them that were bound/' 
The same work must be done wherever 
the same truth is received. Therefore 
was it against the holders of this doctrine 
that the persecutions of the sixteenth cen- 
tury were especially aimed. ^* It cannot 
be denied (said Melancthon) that we are 
brought into trouble, and exposed to dan- 
ger, for this only reason : that we believe 
the favour of God to be procured for us, 
not by our observances, but for the sake of 
Christ alone.''' ^ A leader in the Council 
of Trent spoke the truth when he oppo- 
sed the doctrine of imputed righteous- 
ness, because it '' abolished the punishment 
together with the guilt, '^ and '^left no place 
remaining for satisfaction ;''t in other 
words, it left no purgatory for the par- 
doned, nor need of any of the devices 
of merit, by which the Church of Rome, 
''with feigned words,'^ makes merchan- 
dize of the souls of menX No wonder 

* Ep. i. 120. 

t Fra. Paolo's Hist, of the Council of Trent, b. 2. p. 200. 

X 2 Pet. ii. 3. Rev, xviii, 13. 



44 

then that there should be such opposition, 
for, says Luther, "this it is that is to 
crush the serpent's head. Satan there- 
fore cannot fail to direct his opposition 
against it;" "this is the head corner- 
stone which supports, nay gives existence 
and life to the Church of God ; so that 
without it the Church cannot subsist for 
an hour."* 

Now, my Brethren, it is because I 
thoroughly believe in the unquenchable 
enmity of Satan to this blessed doctrine ; 
and that it is, now as ever, his one grand 
effort, to mine under its base and insert 

* Letter to Brentius in Scott's Continuation of Milner. 
Bp. Warburton does not make the denial of transubstantia- 
tion, papal supremacy, &c. i&c. to have been the foundation 
of the Protestant Reformation. Speaking of the doctrine 
of the redemption of mankind by Christ, he says, iliis^ to- 
gether with its consequent doctrine of Justification by Faith 
alone, were the great gospel principles on which Protest- 
antism was founded. — On the Doctrine of Grace. 

'* The fruitful parent (says Faber) ot Expiatory Penance, 
Expiatory Good Deeds, Purgatory, Indulgences and Super- 
erogation, is the vain phantasy, so congenial to our proud, 
though fallen nature; — the phantasy of Meritorious Satis- 
faction. This deeply rooted and widely pullulating Heresy, 
which lies at the bottom of all false schemes of religion, 
whether Pagan or Papal or Mahommedan or Socinian, is 
cherished in all its baneful influence by the Church of 
Rome." — '* The doctrine of Merit and the doctrine of Du- 
ty, lie at the very root of the utterly irreconcilable differen- 
ces between the lapsed Church of Rome and the Reformed 
Church of England." — Faher's Tiomanisni, 2d ed. app. 



45 

in its stead some plausible pretence of 
man's righteousness, however disguised 
under the name of the indwelling of 
God's; having for the subject of his de- 
vices the same corrupt nature and deceit- 
ful heart as when he first succeeded in 
thus subverting the foundations of the 
Gospel ; it is because as a wise master- 
builder of anti-christian error, he is too 
wary not to put forth his plans under the 
staunchest claims of primitive purity and 
with the strongest opposition to many 
of the peculiar and most glaring heresies 
of Rome, in order that the truth may 
slide away imperceptibly for want of a 
watchful discrimination and of a faithful 
resistance of the beginnings of error, and 
that a doctrine of inherent righteousness 
for justification may, by many covered 
approaches and glossed expressions, effect 
an unseen lodgment in its place, a lodg- 
ment which may be the more dangerous, 
because it may be attended with much 
that is true and lovely and of good report, 
as well in the personal character and 



46 

learning of its special, though unwary, 
advocates, as in the usefulness of some 
of their measures ; it is because there is 
so much in the peculiarities of these 
times to expose the Protestant Church to 
a disintegration of its most precious doc- 
trines ; a special fondness, on the one 
hand, for \he practical, as distinguished 
from the doctrinal, accompanied with a 
disproportionate tendency to the active, 
as distinguished from the contemplative, 
in religion; while, on the other hand, 
there is arising a strong re-action which, 
in some parts^ is in danger of returning 
to the contemplative and the doctrinal, 
too much, by the way of the mystical; 
and thus of spreading a cloud, in which 
error may find a covert, and truth, con- 
fusion:* — these are some of the consid- 
erations, my Brethren, which now weigh 
upon my mind and induce me to believe 
that the course of remark with which the 

* In a late number of the British Critic, we read that <*in 
the present day, mistiness [qu. mysticism'] is the mother of 
wisdom. You may hold the most fatal errors or the most 
utter extravagancies, if you hold them in a confueed and 
misty way." 



47 

rest of this address will be occupied, may 
not be unseasonable, or without its 
benefits. 

That I may stir up your minds by Way 
of remembrance, in regard to those main 
points of the doctrine of Justification, 
on which a minister of Christ should 
study to be especially clear in his state- 
ments, strong in his proofs, and watch- 
ful against ignorances and perversions, I 
will occupy the remainder of this dis- 
course in thesetting forth of those partic- 
ulars, as far as time will allow, and in 
exhibiting the doctrine of the Scriptures 
and of our Church in regard to them. 

All-important, to the whole subject, is 
a distinct idea of the meaning and use of 
the term Justification. With this, 
therefore, let us begin. 

When the Apostle declares that "by 
faith a man is justified," in what sense 
is that justification to be understood? 
The question is easily answered, but the 
whole subject materially depends on it. 



48 

JustiJicatioTiy in its most comprehen- 
sive sense, imports the making of a man 
just or righteous. 

This must be done in one of two ways. 
It must be either by a personal change in 
a man^s moral nature^ or by a relative 
change in his state, as regards the sen-i 
tence of the law of God. The former 
justification is opposed to unhoHness ; the 
latter to condemnation ; the one takes 
away the indwelling of moral pollution ; 
the other, the imputation of judicial guilt. 
If we understand Justification, in the 
first sense, as expressing the making a 
man righteous, ^'hi/ an infusion of rights 
eousnessj^^ as Romanism expresses it, we 
make it identical with Sanctijication, and 
therefore, it is as gradual as the progress 
of personal holiness, and never complete 
till we are perfected in heaven. But how 
will that sense appear in such a passage 
as that wherein it is said : *' He that jus- 
tifieth the ivicked and he that candemneth 
the just y even they both are an abomination 



49 

to the LorcL^ Not to speak of tlie evi- 
dent opposition in this passage between 
the words justify and condemn^ implying 
in both a judicial and not a moral change ; 
how could it be an abcmiination to the 
Lord to justify the wicked, by making 
him personally holy, by an infusion of 
personal righteousness. But if we take 
Justification in the latter sense, as indica- 
ting a relative change., it is then a term of 
lait\ understood judicially^ and expresses 
the act of God, in his character of Judge, 
deciding the case of one accused before 
him, and instead of condemning, acquit- 
ting him; instead of holding him guilty, 
accounting him righteous^ so that he be- 
comes the man of whom David speaks—- 
the happy man ''unto whom the Lord 
imputeth no sin.^'* 

In relation to the former J^^nse, there 
is not a place in Scripture wherein the 
word Justify, in anv of its forms, is used, 
in reference to remission of sins^ that can 
be so interpreted. As to the latter, the 

* Prov. xvii ; 15* 

4 



50 

judicial sense, there are passages, very- 
many, in which it can with no appearance 
of reason, be understood in any other.* 
This sense is specially manifest where 
Justification is spoken of as the opposite 
of condemnation. Take Rom. v ; 18. 
**As by the offence of om^ judgment 
came upon all men to condemnation ;. 
even so by the righteousness of one, the 
free gift came upon all men unto justifi- 
cation of life." Here, most evidently. 
Justification imports a judicial clearing 
from the imputation of guilt, in the pre- 
cise sense and degree in which condemna- 
tion imports a judicial fastening of the 
imputation of guilt. The same appears 
i^ Rom. viii; 23i ^'Wlio shall lay any 
thing to the charge of God's elect f It is 
God that 5TJSTIFIETH ; who is he that con-- 
DEMNETH?'' Here is the idea of a court, 
a tribunal, a person, arraigned ; the accu- 
ser is called; the wWe is judicial; and 
if by the condemnation^ spoken of, we 

* See Job ix ; 2, 3. Ps. cxliii ; 2. Roki, iii • 8. Acti 
xiii; 39. 



51 

could understand an act of the Judge 
making the accused guilty by the infu- 
sion of unrighteousness ; then also by the 
Justification, spoken of, we might under- 
stand an act of the Judge making the 
accused just by an infusion of righteous- 
ness; but if this interpretation would be 
absurd in the former case, so must it be 
in the latter, for the two must evidently 
be interpreted alike.* 

But it is not necessary to go very par- 
ticularly into the proof of the judicial 
sense of the word Justification in the 
Scriptures. t The great matter is to keep ^ 
clear the essential difference between. 
Justification ^indi Sanctifieation ; between ' 
the former, as opposed to the imputation 

• For other examples of the opposition of Justification 
and Condemnation see Mat. xii; 37; Deut. xxv; 1: 1 Kings, 
viii ; 32 : 2 Chron. Vi^ 2 and 3. That this is the sense of 
the word in the Scriptures, especially in the N. T. is so ob- 
vious (says Bp. Bull) that he must be almost blind who does 
not perceive it: "j^cewe cotcus est qui non videat.'* For the 
opinion of this learned writer at large, see his Harmonia 
Apostolica, Dissert. 1. c. 1. 

t It is not a little remarkable that, even in the Council of 
Trent, the judicial sense of Justification, in opposition to the 
*^ effective,*' was maintained by some leading characters. In 
an argument on this subject, in which it was maintained that 
whenever St. Paul speaks of justification he is to be under- 
stood "in an effective sense," i. e. as making y instead of 
^accounting*' a man righteous, a great dispute arose b«- 



52 

of guilt, and the latter, to the indwelling 
of unholiness ; the former as a restora- 
tion to favour ; the latter, to purity ; this, 
as the act of God within us, changing 
our moral character ; the other, as the act 
of God without us, changing our relative 
state; blessings inseparable indeed, but 
essentially distinct. " There be two kinds 
of Christian righteousness ; (says Hook- 
ker) the one without us which we have 
by imputation; the other in us, which 
consisteth of Faith, Hope, Charity and 
other Christian virtues — God giveth us 
both the one justice and the other; the 
one by accepting us for righteous in 
Christ; the other by working Christian 
righteousness in us/' 

The evidence of St. Paul's Epistles, as 
to the use of the word Justify, is thus 
expressed by Bishop Barrow. '*The 
purport of the reasoning, so often used, 

tween Soto and Marinarus, a Carmelite ,* the latter main- 
taining that such an interpretation of St. Paul was "mani- 
festly against the text, which maketh a judicial process , and 
saith that none can accuse or condemn God's elect, because 
€rod doth justify them: where the judicial words, to accuse 
and condemn, do shew that the word Justify, is judicial 
also,'' F, Paolo's Hist. 6. 2. p. 199. 



53 

(by St. Paul) doth imply that a man's 
justification signifieth his being accepted 
or approved as just, standing rectus in 
curia y being in God's esteem, and by 
his sentence, absolved from guilt and 
punishment;" ^^St. Paul expresseth jus- 
tification as an act o^ judgment performed 
by God whereby he declareth his own 
righteousness or justice;" Rom iii; 24, 
5, 6. ^'It cannot be understood for a 
constituting man intrinsically righteous,, 
or infusing worthy qualities into him; 
but rather for an act of God terminated 
upon a man as altogether unworthy of 
God's love, as impious^ as an enemy ^ as 
a pure object of mercy ;^^ Rom* iv: 5; V; 
10. '*When it is said again and again, 
that faith is imputed for righteousness^ it 
is plain enough that no other thing in 
man was required thereto; to say that he 
is thereby sanctified^ or hath gracious 
habits infused, is uncouth and arbitrari- 
ous." ^^Justification and condemnation 
being both of them the acts of God and 
it being plain that God condemning doth 



54 

not infuse any inherent unrighteousness 
into man, neither doth He justifyingj 
formally put any inherent righteousness 
into him/'* In Bishop Beveridge, of most 
venerable memory, we thus read: *'It is 
evident that the Holy Ghost useth this 
word Justification to signify a man's 
being accounted, or declared, not guilty 
of the faults he is charged with, but in 
that respect a just and righteous person, 
and that too before some Judge, who in 
our case is the supreme Judge of the 
world. And this is plainly the sense 
wherein our Church also useth the word 
in her articles; for the title of the Xlth 
Article is thus : ' Of the Justification of 
Man ; ' but the Article itself begins 
thus: *We are accounted righteous be- 
fore God,' &c. — which clearly shows that 
in her sense, to be justified is the same 
with being accounted righteous before 
God ; which I therefore observe that you 
may not be mistaken in the sense of the 
word as it is used by the Church and by 

* Barrow on Juslificalion. 



55 

the Holy Ghost Himself in the Holy 
Scriptures, like those who confound 
Justification and Sanctification together, 
as if they were one and the same thing: 
although the Scriptures plainly distin- 
guish them; Sanctification being God's 
act in us, whereby we are made righteous 
in ourselves ; but Justification is God's 
act in Himself, whereby we are accounted 
righteous by him and shall be declared so 
at the judgment of the great day/' * 

Such then being the judicial or 
fmensic sense in which man is said to be 
juistified before God, a sense so essen- 
tially important to be kept distinctly in 
mind, that, as Bishop Andrews says, 
"we shall never take the state of the 
question aright unless we consider it in 
this view ; " t and since a judicial process 
implies a law, according to which it is 
conducted, and a law requires, of course, 
a perfect fulfilment of its precepts, in 
other words, u perfect righteousness^ be- 

• Beveridge*s Sermons ?^o. 74. 

.t Sermons (Justification) fol. 725. Bp. Andrews is par- 
ticularly strong in support of Vsi^ formsic nature of our jus- 
tification. 



56 

fore any can be justified by sentence of 
the Judge ; the question occurs, % what 
righteousness is a sinner to he justified 
hefm^e God? 

Brethren what do we teach, what must 
we teach on this subject? The Law of 
God is ''holy, just and good;" it is as 
holy, just and good now, as in the be- 
ginning ; requiring, as ever, a perfect ful- 
filment: So that, as St. James says, "he 
that offends in one point is guilty ofall^^^ 
and comes under the whole condemna- 
tion of a broken law. The figment of a 
mitigated law, a new law, called the gos- 
pel, requiring less than the perfect obe- 
dience of the old, and reduced into a 
nearer accommodation to our infirmities, 
that is to say, to our corrupt and disobedi- 
ent hearts^ is as much opposed to propriety 
of terms, as to scriptural verity. 

The change wrought by the transition 
of man from under the covenant of 
works, to that of grace, is not a change 
from the requirement of a perfect fulfil- 
ment of the law for justification, to that of 



57 

an imperfect ; for now as ever the right- 
eousness for which alone we can be ac- 
counted righteous, must be perfect. No- 
thing less, in a judicial seiise^ can be right- 
eousness. Inasmuch as we are account- 
ed sinners, simply because we have trans- 
gressed the law, whether it be only once, 
or a thousand times; so we can be ac- 
counted righteous only when we may be 
regarded as having perfectly kept the 
law. *^ Nothing (says Bishop Hall) can 
formally make us just, but that which is 
perfect in itself. How can it give what 
it hath not?" "That is no righteous- 
ness, (says Bishop Hopkins) which doth 
not fully answer the law which is the 
rule of it; for the least defect destroys 
its nature and turns it into unrighteous- 
ness." Now the change wrought by the 
covenant of grace changes not the de- 
mand of the law except as it effects a 
transition from the requirement of a per- 
sonal fulfilment^ for justification, to that 
o^ fulfilment hi/ a surety. "The obedi- 
ence to the Law (says Bishop Reynolds) 



58 

is not r^noved, but the disobedience is 
pardoned and healed/' The covenant 
of works demanded a personal righteous- 
ness, without spot or wrinkle. The cove- 
nant of grace provides that perfect right- 
eousness in the person of a representa- 
tive — 'Hhe Lord our Righteousness ;^^ so 
that every believer is ^'accepted in the 
beloved,^^ as being ''complete in him/' and 
'^^may be called, (in the language of the 
Homily) a fulfiUer of the Law," * 

Now there are but two conceivable 
classes of justifying righteousness, viz: 
Our own righteousness^ and the righteous^ 
ness of Christ. These are continually 
distinguished in the Scriptures and set in 
direct and irreconcilable opposition to 
each other. Is one called ''the righteous- 
Tiess of laiv?^^ the other is ''the righteous- 
ness of faith ;^^ f is the one called by St. 

* The above view is evidently taught in the Homily of 
Salvation, not only in the passage quoted, but also where it 
is said that 'Mn our justification, there is not only God's 
raercy and grace, but also his justice, which the Apostle call- 
eth the justice of God ; and it consisteth in paying our ran- 
som and fulfilling of the law. And so the grace of God doth 
not fihut out the justice of God in our justification ; but only 
shutteth out the justice of man, that is to say, the justice of 
our works/' Part 1. See. Appendix A« t Rora. x ; 5, 6. 



59 

Paul, our ^'ownrighteoicsnessV the other, 
he calls "the righteousness of God.^^ * Is 
one described as ''by the lawV^ the other 
is ''without the law'' t Is one *' reckoned 
to him that worhethV the other is "to him 
that worketh not^'t Is the one "of 
debt?'* the other is "of grace." § Does 
the one give man "ivhereof to glwy" be- 
cause it is "of works?" the other "ex- 
chides boasting" because it is "of faith" \\ 
Does St. Paul ''count all things but loss 
that he may win Christ and be found in 
him?'' He has no hope of succeeding 
till he has first laid aside Ms own right- 
e(Msness as worthless and put on, in its 
steady "the righteousness which is by the 
faith of Christ/'^ In his view, these 
two cannot coalesce; cannot unite into 
one vesture; they are essentially incon- 
sistent in the office of justification; so 
that if we trust in the one, we cannot 

* Rom. X ; 3. 

t Gal. ii: 21; and Rom. iii; 21. 

t Rom. iv; 4 and 5. 

\ Rom. iv; 4 and 16. 

I Rom. iv; 2; and iii; 27. 

S Phil, iii; .9. 



60 

have the other; if we *'go about to 
estabhsh our own righteousness," it im- 
pUes that we have not submitted tOj but 
rejected the righteousness of God. * Our 
justification must be either of grace exchi- 
sively, or of works exclusively. It can- 
not be of both, ^'Not of ii^orhs lest any 
man should boast. ^^ t ^'If hy grace^ (says 
St. Paul) then it is no more of worksj 
otherivise grace is no more grace. But if 
it he of loorks^ then it is no more grace ; 
otherwise ivork is no more work.^^X ^*It 
is not grace any way, (says Augustine) 
if it be not free every way." 

Now between one or the other of these 
rival hopes must every sinner choose. 
His choice of one is necessarily the re- 
jection of the other. 

I cannot suppose, my Brethren, that 
in a discourse addressed to such auditors, 
there is any need of maintaining that the 
righteousness of Christ, in his obedience 
and death, embraced by faith, excluding 

* Rom. x; 3. 
t Eph. ii; 9. 
X Rom. xi; 6. 



61 

our own works and deservings entirely, 
is the only ground of a sinner's hope of 
Justification before God. But for a min- 
ister to know this, fully to believe it, and 
truly to preach it, is one thing; it is 
another thing to preach it so earnestly, 
so clearly, so frequently, with such dis- 
crimination, as that, in spite of the con- 
tinually opposing ministry of self-right- 
eousness, by all that is corrupt and de- 
ceitful in the human heart, his people 
shall be thoroughly furnished in the 
knowledge, and, as far as man can make 
them, in the heart-felt impression, of the 
utter worthlessness of their own ''works 
and deservings," and thus armed against 
''the wiles of the devil,'^ by whatever 
path he would allure their trust away 
from an exclusive reliance upon the ac- 
counted righteousness of Christ. Plain 
is the doctrine; but like the letters of 
the alphabet, it must run through all 
your preaching. It is one of those first 
principles of the doctrine of Christ, 
which we can never leave, till Satan is 



62 

cast down and death swallowed up in 
victory.* 

I cannot refer you to any better human 
example as to how to set forth this hum- 
bling doctrine than the standards of our 
own Church. For an example of the 
spirit of self-abasement and renunciation 
before God to which you should strive to 
bring all committed to your charge, study 
the language of our Liturgy, especially 
the deeply penitential language of the 
communion-office. What confessions are 
there! what renunciations of all trust in 
our own righteousness! what exclusive 
looking unto Jesus! But apply to the 
Articles. Read the eleventh-^*' we are 
accounted righteous before God only for 

* ** The notion of human righteousness, (says Luther) or 
that of works, is so deeply rooted in men's hearts that they 
find it impossible to detach it from the righteousness of faith 
or< grace. And no wonder; for I myself have found by num- 
berless severe conflicts how arduous a thing it is, how purely 
it is a matter of divine gift to have the knowledge of the 
doctrine — that v/e are justified by grace, without works, 
that faith in Christ alone is the only righteousness of the 
saints—to have this knowledge rooted and turned into a 
principle in the soul." *' I have myself taught this doctrine, 
for twenty years, and yet the old and tenacious mire clings 
to me, so that I find myself wanting to come to God, bring- 
ing something in my hand for which he should bestow hia 
grace upon me.'* Letter to Justus Jonas, and Sermon on, 
) Tim. i; 5—7. 



63 

the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, by faith, and ^^not for our own 
works or deservings.^^ 

Now although our own works were the 
best that man ever performed, and our 
deservings greater than ever a sinner 
possessed, since the world began ; though 
our inherent righteousness have been 
growing these hundred years, and be 
now laden beyond all example with holy 
fruits; or, to use the words of Bishop 
Hooper, *' though a man burst his heart 
with contrition, believe that God is good 
a thousand times and burn in charity,'' * 
nevertheless these are ^'oiir own works 
and deservings^^^ and so are pronounced, 
in the Article, to have no part or lot in 
our justification. 

But for greater plainness, the works of 
man are divided, in our Articles, into 
two classes : — those done before^ and those 
done after ^ receiving the grace of God, 
i. e. Justification. Of the first, the 
twelfth Article declares that since *Hhey 

•" Bisiiop Hooper on Justification. 



64 

proceed not of a lively faith in Jesus 
Christ, they are not pleasant to God," 
but ''rather for that they are not done as 
God hath willed and commanded — they 
have the nature of sin;" so far therefore 
from deserving God's justification, they 
can only increase our condemnation. 
Of works done after we have received 
the grace of Christ; after the work of 
sanctification has been begun and ad- 
vanced in us, so that we have an inherent 
righteousness, wrought in us by the 
spirit of God, the Church, so far from 
allowing these the least share in that for 
which we are accounted righteous before 
God, declares in her twelfth Article that 
such works cannot be the cause of our 
Justification, because ''they follow after 
it;^^ cannot be co-workers with faith, in 
our Justification, because they are ''the 
fruits of faith'' and though "pleasing 
and acceptable to God," in Christy "can- 
not put away our sins and endure the 
severity of God's Judgment." But these 
declarations are greatly enlarged in the 



65 

Homily to which the eleventh Article 
refers us for a more extended declaration 
of our faith. There, the impossibility of 
our own works and deservings having 
any share in our justification is rested, 
as in St. Paul's Epistle, not so much upon 
the fact that all have sinned in innume- 
rable instances^ as upon the simple truth 
that they have sinned; that the Scriptures 
'include all under sin;'' the extent or 
number of their sins not being treated as 
material to the argument. '^Because 
(says the Homily) all men be sinners and 
offenders against God, and breakers of 
His Law and Commandments, therefore 
can no man, by his own acts, works, and 
deeds, seem they never so good, be jus- 
tified and made righteous before God ; " 
''Although we hear God's word and be- 
lieve it; although we have faith, hope, 
charity, repentance, dread and fear of 
God within us, and do never so many 
good works thereunto, yet we must re- 
nounce the merits of all our said virtues 

of faith, hope, charity and our other vir-^ 
5 



66 

tues and good deeds, which we either 
have done, shall do, or can do, as things 
that be far too weak and insufficient and 
imperfect to deserve remission of our 
sins and our justification/' The same 
Homily is full of passages of equal force 
and plainness to the same eflPect. I can- 
not refer you to a better human study.* 
Let us see, Brethren, that we come not 
short of these high examples of simpli- 
city and godly sincerity, in our ministry, 
labouring with all earnestness and con- 
stancy to abase the pride of the human 
heart, to strip the sinner of all his secret 
pleas of works and merit — to bring him 
in guilty, only guilty and condemned, at 
the bar, as well of his own conscience, 
as of God his Judge. The way of the 
Lord, to the sinner's heart, is not pre- 
pared till every thought of any thing to 
make him meet to be received of Christ, 
or to receive grace through Christ, but 
perfect beggary and worthlessness, is cast 
out ; till every imagination of any thing 

* See flooker' 8 Discourse of Justification; ^7. 



67 

to make him acceptable to the Father, 
even after centuries of holy living, but 
the righteousness of Christ alone, is utter- 
ly cast down. Here then, my Brethren, 
is one of the chief and one of the long- 
est and hardest works of our Ministry — 
to convince men of sin, to lead them to 
feel that they are shut up, as prisoners in 
bondage to the curse of a broken law, 
till they ^^win Christ and be found in 
him/' "Why (says Usher) do so many 
find no savour in the gospel? Is it be- 
cause there is no sweetness in it? No, 
it is because such have had no taste of 
the law, and of the spirit of bondage ; 
they have not smarted, nor found a sense 
of the bitterness of sin, nor of that just 
punishment which is due unto the same/' 
"Thus a king many times casts men in 
prison, suffers the sentence of condem- 
nation to pass on them and perhaps or- 
ders them to be brought to the place of 
execution before he pardons them, and 
then mercy is mercy indeed. And so 
God deals with us. Many times he puts 



68 



his children in fear; shows them how 
much they owe him, how unable they are 
to pay, casts them into prison, and threat- 
ens condemnation in hell forever; after 
which when mercy comes to the soul, 
then it appears to be wonderful mercy 
indeed, even the riches of exceeding 
mercy." * So does God expect us, the 
ministers of his saving health, to deal 
with sinners. Our preaching must show^ 
them their ruin, their condemnation, their 
just exposure to the instant and eternal 
wrath of God ; it must smite down their 
refuges of lies, silence their vain excuses, 
reduce them to the one confession of 
guilty^ undone^ lost; or it will fail of its 
first work, that of leading lost souls to 
Christ. 

It is my firm belief that a very great 
cause of the little success of much of the 
preaching of Christ's ministers, in that 
great business of converting sinners and 
leading them to the refuge provided in 
the Lamb of God, is to be found in a 

^ Usher's Seimons. 



69 

want of a sufficiently distinct, pointed 
presentation, to the impenitent, of the 
naked truth, the whole, the aw^ful truth, 
of the present condemnation, the present 
abiding under the wrath of God, of 
every one who hath not fled to Christ. 
There is a kind of ministry which preach- 
es the truth indeed on this head, but the 
truth so enveloped in generalities, so 
buried in accompaniments, that while a 
mind awake to divine things can readily 
see it, the unconverted ^'hear indeed, but 
do not perceive." What the impenitent 
need is to see themselves insulated by 
the stern demands of a violated law; 
'^condemned already ^^^ as really, though 
upt as irreversibly^ as if the judgment 
day were over ; or to use the language of 
the Apostle, '^ condemned unto sin^^^ sur- 
rounded, as by a wall of fire, with its 
penalties, and thus '^shut up unto the 
faith^- of Christ, as all their hope; so 
that the law shall be their '^ schoolmaster 
to bring them unto Christ that they may 
be justified by faith," This is what 



70 

Usher calls '^putting the point of God^s 
sword to their very breasts. ^^ '^The law 
(he says) must have this operation before 
a sinner comes to the throne of grace. 
None will fly to the city of refuge, till 
the avenger of blood be hard at his heeb ; 
nor any to Christ till he sees his want/' 
*' Where the law hath not wrought its con- 
vincing work with power upon the con- 
science, (says Bishop Hopkins) there the 
preaching of Christ will be altogether in 
vain." It is a great matter for a preacher 
of the gospel to attain to such clearness 
and directness and point in his preaching 
of the law, that, while fully displaying 
all that is encouraging and precious in 
the Gospel to the penitent, the naked 
sword of God's law is faithfully presented 
to all who are not ^^in Christ Jesus;'' so 
that they who see at all cannot help per- 
ceiving that other refuge there is none 
save that ** blessed hope," the perfect 
obedience, the atoning death, the present 
ever-living intercession of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 



71 

My dear Brethren, how is it with us, 
as to this matter? Do we make it a main 
and constant object of our ministry to 
convince men of sin? Do we preach 
the law, the old, the perfect law, that 
which tolerates no imperfection — whose 
terms ane '^do this and live^^ — 'Hhe min- 
istry of condemnation^^ that we may make 
straight the way for ^Hhe ministration of 
righteousness ^^^ ^Ho wit^ that God was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto himself, 
not imputing their trespasses unto them ?'* 
Do we strive after great plainness of 
speech on these points lest "ears that be 
dull of hearing "" should not hear them, or 
''they that hear, should not perceive?^' 
Do we expect any saving benefit from, 
our ministry to the souls of our hearers, 
till by the Spirit of God, they are persua- 
ded to come, as the lost and the beggared, 
with the empty hand of an imploring 
faith, to ask alnis of Christ even mercy to 
unrighteousness? Besure we can build 
up no superstructure of piety, but as upon 



72 

hay and stubble, till we have first surely 
laid this foundation of rock. 

But it is time to proceed to another 
main point of our duty^, as preachers of 
God's righteousness for the reconciliation 
of the sinner. While we earnestly insist 
on the absolute insufficiency of our own 
works, or inwrought righteousness, to do 
any, even the leasts part of our Justifica- 
tion ; what must we teach^ as to that only 
and all-suffijcient Righteousness hy which 
ive may be justified ? 

I answer from the Word of God. 
"Be it known unto you, men and breth- 
ren, that through this man (Christ Jesus) 
is preached unto you forgiveness of sins; 
and by him all that believe, are justified 
from all things from which they could not 
be justified by the law of Moses.'' * 
But justified how? ''Justified freely by 
his grace,'^^\ answers St. Paul. But what 
grace? Is it by grace dwelling in us, 
under the form of personal holiness — 

* Acts xiii; 38, 9 
t Rom. iii; 24^ 



73 

mherent righteousness? Paul answers 
again* ^^Not having mine own right- 
eousness, which is of the Law; but that 
which is through the faith of Christy the 
rigJiteousriess which is of God^ hy faith.^^ * 
But how make this external righteous- 
ness available to our justification? St. 
Paul answers again. It is ^^the right- 
eousness of God which is by the faith of 
Jesus Christ to all them that believe. ^^ \ 
''Not of works lest any man should 
boast." X It is righteousness imputed to 
the believer. "Even as David descri- 
beth the blessedness of the man, to whom 
the Lord imputeth righteousness without 
works." § Thus ''being justified hy 
faithy we have peace with God through 
our Lord Jesus Christ." || "There is 
now therefore no condemnation to them 
that are in Christ Jesus." % This is the 
way of a sinner's justification, of which ^ 

* Phil, iii; 9. 
t Rom. iii; 22. 
t Eph. ii; 9. 
§ Rom. iv; 5, 6= 
[I Rom. v; 1. 
fl" Rom. viii; 1, 



74 

says that holy man, Bishop Hall: "We 
bless God for so clear a ligiit ; and dare 
cast our ^ouls upon this sure evidence of 
God, attended with the perpetual evi- 
dence of his ancient Church/' " Chrisf s 
imputed justice apprehended by faith; 
(he continues) all antiquity is with us for 
this. A just volume would scarce con- 
tain the pregnant testimonies of the Fath- 
ers to this purpose.^'' * That this is none 
other than the doctrine of our Church is 
evident to all who know the strong lan- 
guage of her Articles and Homilies ; she 
declares, in her eleventh Article, that 
'^we are accounted righteous before God 
only for the merit of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, hy faithy and not 
for our own works or deservings. Where- 
fore that we are justified by faith mily, 

* Works, 8vo— vol. ix.; p. 239 and 244. 

*'That man is justified hy faitJt, icithout the works of the 
lato, was (says Bishop Horslfey) the uniform doctrine of the 
first Reformers. It is a far more ancient doctrine. It was 
the doctrine of the whole College of Apostles. It is more 
ancient still: It was the doctrine of the Prophets. It is 
older than the Prophets: It was the religion of the Patri- 
archs. It is the very corner stone of the whole system of 
Redemption.*' Charge by Bishop Horsley. 



15 

is a most wholesome doctrine/* &c. Let 
us mark the precision of this language, 
the righteousness which is by the faith of 
Christ, and our own righteousness are 
here, according to the example of St. 
Paul,*^ set in direct opposition ; the words 
''only for the merits of Christ^^ being 
evidently the intended opposite of ''for 
our own worksr The former excludes 
the latter. The two are incapable of 
standing together in this matter. Even 
faith viewed as it is a work of personal 
grace is excluded, and is considered only 
as an instrument of connection with 
Christ, t But such is the fulness of that 
meritorious cause, unto all who believe, 
that they are accounted righteous; in 
other words, righteousness is accounted 

* Phil, iii; 9 

f It is worthy of note how carefully the merely instru- 
mental office of faith is exhibited in the Article; as appears 
more plainly in the Latin form, which is of equal authority 
with the English. **Tantum propter meritum domini ac 
servatoris nostri Jesu Christi, per fidem, non propter opera 
et merita nostra, justi coram Deo reputamur. Quare sola 
fide, nos justificari, doctrina est saluberrima," &c. 

What is meant by sola Jidcy is shown by the use of per 
with fdem, and propter with meritum^ and its antithesis^ 
opera nostra. 



76 

or imputed to them; righteousness as 
perfect, as the merits of our Redeemer, 
because of those merits, it consists; so 
that, to believers, God no more imputes 
sin, than if they had never sinned. And 
since this righteousness is hy faith^ with- 
out restriction of time or degree, it must 
be imputed as soon as faith begins; so 
that we no sooner beUeve in Jesus Christ 
than we are accounted righteous in him, 
and so are perfectly justified, and have 
entire peace with God. 

But the Homily, to which the Article 
refers, is still more explicit. "Our jus- 
tification doth come purely by the mere 
mercy of God, and of so great and free 
mercy, that whereas all the world was 
not able, of themselves, to pay any part 
towards their ransom, it pleased our 
Heavenly Father, of his infinite mercy, 
without any desert or deserving, to pre- 
pare for us the most precious jewels of 
Christ's body and blood; whereby our 
ransom might be fully paid, the law ful- 
filled, and his justice fully sanctified, 



77 

So that Christ is now the righteousness 
of all them that truly believe in him» 
He for them paid their ransom by his 
death. He for them fulfilled the law in 
his life. So that note in him and hy him^ 
every true christian may be called a fuh 
filler of the law'' Mark the strength of 
these last words! Thev teach us that 
when it is said, in the Article, that by 
faith *'we are accounted righteous before 
God," we are to understand no less than 
that whenever a sinner believes in the 
Lord Jesus Christ, though his sins be 
as scarlet, and as many as sands upon the 
sea shore, the righteousness of Christ is 
so perfectly '"-made over to him^'' that he 
stands, in Him, before God, as having 
nothing laid to his charge; his sins re- 
membered no more; his justification as 
perfect as was that of Adam before he 
sinned, no more capable of being in- 
creased, than the righteousness of "the 
beloved'' in whom he is accepted. This 
is the fulness of the glory of our redemp- 
tion. ''It is finished'' "He that be- 



78 

lieveth is justified from all things from 
which he could not be justified by the 
law of Moses/* Therefore does St. Paul 
triumphantly exclaim: "Who shall lay 
any thing to the chaise of God^s elect? 
it is God that justifieth, who is he that 
condemneth?'' Such is the blessed doc- 
trine which our Church most truly pro- 
nounces to be *'a most wholesome doctrine^ 
and very full of coirfort.^^ 

Brethren, I am free to say that if we 
preach the gospel of salvation in its ful- 
ness, and freeness, and preciousness, and 
glory, we must not fail to preach Justifi- 
cation in all this length and breadth and 
perfectness. I find not that our old and 
great divines had any hesitation in doing 
so. Witness Bishop Beveridge — speak- 
ing of our being in Christ, by faith, he 
says: *^Then God looks upon us, not as 
in ourselves, but as members of that body 
whereof his Son is head, and as parta- 
kers of all the merits of his life and death. 
That most perfect obedience and right- 
eousness which he performed to God for 



79 

us, being made over to its and reckoned 
ours. In which therefore we appear as 
Righteous before God and he is pleased 
to accept of us as much, as if we were 
perfectly so in ourselves, or rather more. 
The righteousness which we have in Christ:, 
being far greater than it was possible for 
us to have performed in our most perfect 
state. ''^ * There seems no room in this 
language for that second Justification of 
which some speak, or for any increase of 
justification. Still stronger, if possible, 
is Hooker. ^^By faith we are incorpo- 
rated into Christ* Then although in 
ourselves we be altogether sinful and un- 
righteous, yet even the man which is im- 
pious in himself full of iniquity, full of 
sin ; him being found in Christ, through 
faith, and having his sin remitted, through 
Repentance ; him God beholdeth with a 
gracious eye, putteth away his sin by not 
imputing it, taketh quite away the pun- 
ishment due thereto by pardoning it and 
accepteth him in Jesus Christ, as per- 

^ Beveridge's Sermons; No. 54. 



80 

fectly righteous as if he had fulfilled all 
that was commanded in the law; shall I 
say more perfectly righteous than if him- 
self had fulfilled the whole law? I must 
take heed what I say ; but the Apostle 
saith ^God made him to be sin for us, 
who knew no sin; that we might be 
made the righteousness of God in him/ 
Such we are in the sight of God the 
Father, as is the very Son of God him- 
self. Let it be counted folly, or frenzy, 
or fury, whatsoever, it is our comfort and 
our wisdom. We care for no knowledge 
in the world but this, that man hath sin- 
ned, and God hath suffered; that God 
hath made himself the Son of Man, and 
that men are made the righteousness of 
God/^ ^ 

Thus much for the perfectness of our 
justification, upon the simple act of faith. 

You perceive. Brethren, that I have 
freely used the word imputed^ as applied 
to the righteousness of faith. I use it 
because it is the Scripture word. ^' Bles- 

" Discourse of Justification; ^ tI. 



81 

sed is the man unto whom the Lord im- 
puteth righteousness without works." It 
is used by our translators interchangably 
with '^reckoned^^ and '•'counted;'''^ — all 
these three words being employed for 
the same Greek word of St. Paul.* I 
understand by it, precisely what the 
Church means by the word, ''accounted'^ 
in her eleventh Article. Righteousness 
accounted or reckoned to us, is righteous- 
ness imputed. So is the word used by 
our ancient divines. Witness the writer 
of the Article. Speaking of the conse- 
quences of a lively faith in Christ, says 
Cranmer: ^^Then God doth no more 
impute unto us our former sins ; but he 
doth impute and give unto us the justice 
and righteousness of his Son Jesus Christ^ 
And so we be counted righteous, for as 
much as no man dare accuse us for that 
sin for the which satisfaction is made 
by our Saviour Christ." t In explaining 
such a passage as that of ii. Cor. v ; 21 -^ 

* Rom. iv. 

t Cranmer' s Catechism; (Redemption.) 

6 



82 

^^He hath made him to he sin for us who 
knew no sin^ that we might he made the 
righteousness of God in him,^^ I know of 
no more appropriate language than to 
say, of the first part, that it expresses the 
imputation of our sin to Christ; and of 
the second part, that it expresses the im- 
putation of Christ's righteousness to us. 
In any other aspect, the verse is not in- 
telligible. Thus says Bishop Hall, ex- 
pounding that verse: ''So were we made 
his righteousness, as he was made our sin. 
Imputation doeth both. It is that which 
enfeoffs our sins upon Christ and us in 
his righteousness. Scripture every where 
teacheth our perfect justification by the 
imputed righteousness of our Saviour, 
brought home to us by faith." * 

I find no hesitation in such writers as 
Archbishops Cranmer and Usher; Bish- 
ops Hooper, Andrews, Hall, Davenant, 
Reynolds, Hopkins, Beveridge, the ''ju- 
dicious Hooker,'' &c., in speaking of the 
righteousness of Christ, as imputed to 

^ Works, Svo—vol. ix.; pp. 242, 3. 



83 

the believer, and the sins of the believer, 
as imputed to Christ, and that, in the 
fullest sense of imputation. In addition 
to the evidence already given from Cran- 
mer and Hall, the following from Arch- 
bishop Usher will suffice. "This is im- 
putative righteousness^ as it is in the Arti- 
cles of the Church of England. That 
for the merits of Jesus Christ, God is 
well pleased with the obedience of his 
Son, both active and passive, as that he 
takes us to be in that state for his sake, 
as if we had all fulfilled his laws, and 
never broken them at any time, and as if 
we owed him not a farthing. And this 
kind of justification must of necessity be 
by imputation: why? because when a 
man hath committed a sin it eannot be 
undone again. The act passed cannot 
be revoked. How then can I be justi- 
fied, the siii being past, and the nature of 
it still remaining ? I say how can I be 
justified any other way than by imputa- 
tion? This kind of justification which 



84 

consists in the remission of sins, cannot 
but be imputative^ * 

Now, my Brethren, if these views of 
the forensic nature, and the only merito- 
rious cause of our justification, be scrip- 
tural, I see iiot the least room remaining 
for the idea that Justification is progres- 
sive^ admits of increase, and that a sinnej 
can be more and more justified. But if 
Justification be not entirely a Judicial, 
Imputative process ; if it be, in part at 
least, the act of God making a sinner 
personally righteous by a substance of 
righteousness infused or implanted, then 
we can see how it may be progressive, 
and have, as Hooker describes such jus- 
tification as having, 'Hts divers after 
meals'^ — but only such justification. 

'^By faith we are incorporated into 
Christ.'^ In other words, by faith we are 
""in Christ Jesiis.'^^ A weak faith accom- 
iplishes this living union as really, though 
tiot with so much sensible consolation to 
the soul, as a stronger faith. But (says 

* Usher's Sermons on Justification. See Appendix, B. 



85 

St. Paul) ''there is no condefnnation to 
them that are in Christ Jesus.'' * Now, 
condemnation is the precise opposite of 
Justification. Where one is not, the 
other must be. To impute sin, is to 
condemn ; not to impute sin, is to justify. 
In precisely the same sense and degree, 
therefore, in which Justification is pro- 
gressive, must Condemnation be also. If 
it be reasonable to speak of God's impu- 
ting sin only par tiallT/, so that a man shall 
be accounted as only partly a sinner, and 
partly not a sinner, then it is reasonable 
to speak of God's justifying but partly ^ 
or accounting a man, in a judicial sense^ 
only partly righteous, partly condemned 
and partly justified, which would amount 
to being partly a child of God and partly 
a child of the devil; partly under pen- 
alty of the law, partly under grace. But 
Condemnation is not progressive, in any 
sense. It is perfect as soon as we sin, 
A thousand moi^e sins will increase our 
penalty, but cannot increase the perfect- 

* Rom. viii: 1,. 



86 

ness of aur coKdemnation. The amount 
of penalty depends on the amouM of 
guilt. The perfectness of condemnation 
depends only on the fact of guilt. So in 
Justification. Christ's Righteousness is 
set in precise opposition to our sin. Jus- 
tification depends upon our having that 
righteousness accounted to us, instead of 
our sin. It is faith which obtains that 
righteousness. ^' Being j ustified hy faith y 
we have peace with God.'" As the first 
act of sin condemns perfectly, so, anala- 
gously, the first act of faith justifies per- 
fectly. Subsequent acts of faith and 
stronger degrees thereof will increase 
our sense of consolation in Christ, and 
our confidence of the love of God, and 
our strength in every walk of godliness, 
and will multiply upon our souls, for pres- 
ent comfort and spiritual prosperity, all 
the recompense arising from such growth 
in grace; just as increase of guilt in- 
creases shame and penalty; but all this 
can no more acquire for us a more per- 
fect justification iban additional guilt 



87 

would obtain a more entire condemna- 
tion. Christ our Righteousness is our 
strong city — our City of Refuge ; — once 
beyond the gates, the sinner is safe from 
the Avenger, whether he enter far within, 
or just cross the threshold.* Christ is 
the Ark. It mattered not in the days of 
Noah whether those who fled from the 
flood to the Ark, were possessed of a 
weak, or trembling faith; whether, du- 
ring the awfulness of the deluge, they 
all felt assured of protection, or were 
some of them doubtful. Strong, or 
weak in faith, they had fled for refuge 
to the hope set before them. When 
the flood came they were found there- 
in. It was enough. AH, from the 
very instant of their entrance, were alike 
perfectly secure under the shadow of the 
Almighty. Continuing in the Ark, their 
safety admitted neither of increase nor 
diminution. So in Christ. He that wins 
Christ, and is found in him, is "complete 
in him.*' He may have entered the last 

* See Leigh ton on 1 Peter, iii: 2.1. 



88 



hour, or the last century; he may have 
come doubting, or assured ; his hand may 
have reached the refuge with a firm or a 
feeble grasp ; he may have escaped out 
of the deepest mire of ungodliness, or 
from having been always ^'not far from 
the kingdom-/' — but it altereth not; he 
is ill the Ark. God hath shut him in. 
"Who shall lay any thing to his charge?** 
"It is God that justifieth. Who is he 
that condemned! ? It is Christ that died ; 
yea, rather that is risen again — w^ho also 
maketh intercession for us." * 

Evidently, since the justification of 
any one who is "m Christ Jestis'^ is ju- 
dicial^ and by virtue of a righteousness 
not his own, except as it is '^ accounted^'' 
to him ; whatever imperfection there may 
be in his justification must be ascribed 
to that accounted righteousness. The 
very nature of such imputation supposes 
that of the thing imputed, the whole is 
imputed. According to Hooker, "That 

* See the comparison of the safety of those in Christy to 
that of those in the Ark beautifully expressed in Leighton on 
1 Peter, iii; 20. 



'89 

wherein we are partakers of Jesus Christ 
by imputation^ agreeth equally unto all 
that have it." In other words it is not 
as if some received more, others less. 
"Again, (he says) a deed must either 
not be imputed to any, but rest alto- 
gether in him whose it is ; or if at all it 
be imputed, they which have it by impu- 
tation, must have it whole. So that de- 
grees being neither in the personal pres- 
ence of Christ, nor in the participation 
of those effects which are ours by impu- 
tation only; it resteth that we wholly 
apply them (degrees) to the participation 
of Christ's infused grace''^ i. e. the grace 
of sanctiiication.^' Hence, justification 
can be imperfect, capable of increase or 
diminution only so far as the righteous- 
ness of Christ can be so, who is "the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever." 

We have not room to go any further 

into this part of our subject. It seems 

indeed to be necessarily settled by the 

judicial sense of Justification, and the 

* Eccl. Pol., c. v., ^ 56. 



90 

excluding, from its ground-work, all in- 
herent righteousness and resting entirely 
upon the perfect and external righteous- 
ness of Christ, accounted or imputed to 
every one that believeth. Where this is 
not distinctly seen, it would seem that 
there must be some confounding of 
righteousness accounted unto us through 
faith, with righteousness wrought in us 
by The Spirit; Justification, with Sanc- 
tification ; deliverance from the condem- 
nation of sin, with progressive emanci- 
pation from its indwelling power and pol- 
lution. The latter, in our Church, is 
said to ''^follow after ''^ Justification. 
While, in the Church of Rome, it is 
made the basis of what they call the 
seccnid Justification. It is therefore per- 
fectly consistent for the Romanist to 
maintain Justification progressive, since 
that is progressive on which it rests. 
Thus do we find, in Hooker's account 
of ''the maze which the Church of 
Rome doth cause her followers to tread,** 
this progressiveness of Justification des- 



91 

cribed as part of '''the maze^'' and a 
prominent characteristic of what he calls 
^Hhe mystery of the Man of Smr The 
grace or righteousness of Justification, 
he says, ^Hheymake capable of increase; 
as the body may be more and more warm, 
so the soul may be more and more justi- 
fied, according as grace should be aug- 
mented. Unto such as have attained 
the first Justification, that is to say, the 
first receipt of Grace, it is applied fur- 
ther by good works, to the increase of 
former grace, which is the second Justi- 
fication. If they work more and more, 
Grace doth more increase, and they are 
more and more justified/** In the de- 
crees of the Council of Trent, it is given 
as one of the infallible determinations of 
the Romish Church, that ''the just are 
more justified by observing the com- 
mandments of God and the Church;'* 
and it was one of the doctrines of Pro- 
testantism, which the Canons of that 
Council condemned, that Justification 

* Discourse of Justification; § v» 



92 

^4s not increased by good works, but 
they are only its fruits/' * But hear 
how the divines of our Church have 
asserted this feature of Protestant con- 
fession. Says Beveridge: ''When God 
pardons any man's sins, he pardons all 
his sins. All his acts of grace are with- 
out exceptions, so that all our former 
sins shall be as if they never had been. 
Nay more than that too, whensoever 
God pardons our sins, he accepts our 
persons ; so far from looking upon us as 
sinners, that he accounts us Highteous,^^ \ 
Hear also how the learned Usher speaks. 
Speaking of imputed and inherent right- 
eousness, he says: ''The one receives 
degrees, the other not. As a man that 
is holy may be more holy ; but imputed 
righteousness doth not more forgive one 
man than another. Imputation is ivith- 
out augmentation or diminution'^ X Hear 
also, Bishop Hopkins, of most venerable 
memory. " It is not said, he only, 

* F. Paolo's Hist. Couneil of Trent. 

t Sermons; No. 144. 

t Usher's Sermons; No. xv. 



93 

whose faith is so strong as to overcome 
all temptations and all doubts and to 
flourish up to assurance, he only shall be 
saved; but whosoever believes shall be 
saved, though his faith be very weak and 
very wavering. And the reason of this 
is clear : for faith doth not save us as it 
is a sanctifying, but as it is a justifying 
grace. It justifies, as it entitles us to 
Christ's perfect righteousness. But a 
weak faith can make a full conveyance of 
the righteousness and merits of Christ as 
well as a strong faith; therefore the 
weakest faith of the most trembling and 
timorous Christian doth as firmly entitle 
him to heaven and glory, as the most 
strong and undaunted faith of the most 
assured Christian.^' * 

But it is objected, if this be true, what 
need of an increasing faith ? Why pray 
^^Lord increase our faith?'' I answer: 
^^The more firm and lively the faith we 
have, the better and the more sincerely 
we work; the more unfeigned and faith- 

* Bishop Hopkins on the Allsufficiency of Christ. 



94 

fully we renounce all confidence in our- 
selves." * I answer again: ^'The more 
faith, the more comfort. If thou hast 
a strong faith, thou wilt have a strong 
consolation. Thou mayest by thy weak 
faith, be healed of thy disease, yet by 
the weakness of thy faith, thou mayest 
want much of the strength of thy com- 
fort ; therefore thou must go from faith 
to faith ; but know this, that a new-born 
child is not yet so strong as a man, yet 
he is as much alive as the strongest and 
tallest man." t 

Brethren, let us not imagine that this 
doctrine of the instant and perfect justi- 
fication of the sinner, the moment the 
hand of his faith but touches the skirt of 
the robe of our blessed Redeemer's right- 
eousness, is a mere matter of empty 
speculation, unconnected with any of 
the precious hopes of the Christian, ex- 
ercising no important bearing upon our 
views of the rich consolations of the gos- 

^ Jackson's Works; vol. 1, p. 758- 
t Usher's Sermons; No. xvi. 



95 

pel. It seems to me to be connected in 
the most important sen^e with the very 
essence of the gospel, and the most vital 
part of the Christian's daily consolation 
in Christ. His whole ability to rejoice, 
in hope of the glory of God, as he is 
commanded to rejoice; his whole confi- 
dence of victory over 'Hhe strength"' of 
sin, which is ''the law," and over the ter- 
rors of death which are the thunders of 
the law; yea the glory of the redemp- 
tion that is in Christ Jesus as a free 
redemption for the unworthiest, and a 
finished redemption for the neediest, and 
a perfect redemption, reaching to the 
uttermost of the sinner's guilt and help- 
lessness and fears ; all seem involved, in a 
very material degree, in this question* 
How can we understand the Article of 
our Church where it declares that the 
doctrine of Justification by faith only, 

^' IS VERY FULL OF COMFORT," aS WcU aS 

'*a most wholesome doctrine," on any 
other ground than that which we have 
exhibited? If the believer already jus- 



96 

tified by faith and at peace with God 
can be more justified; then his present 
justification is iwj^erfect^ and his peace is 
but partial. Since that imperfection can- 
not arise out of any thing defective in 
Christ ; it only remains that he ascribe it 
to something defective in himself. He 
must ascribe it either to the defective- 
ness of his faith, or love, or something 
else, or all together. How is he to know 
when he may hope that this imperfection 
is so far removed that his peace with 
God is perfected? Is there any line, 
drawn by human or divine authority, by 
which he may know of a truth when his 
inherent graces are too imperfect for an 
entire justification, and when so well 
grown as to be capable of no increase of 
justification? The scheme in view, can 
pretend to no such line. Then there is 
never a time when a Christian can do 
else than conjecture, whether his peace is 
entirely made with God or not; whether 
his faith or other works be sufficient 
or not for a full deliverance from the 



97 

condemnation of the law. Thus must 
he be all his life *'in bondage through 
fear of death." Thus, instead of being 
able to say, with Christians of old, 
''though now we see him not, yet be- 
lieving we rejoice^ with joy unspeakable, 
and full of glory,''* he must leave out 
the last clause, and say, believing in him 
indeed, but knowing not that we have 
any reason to hope ever to be with him 
in glory. Instead of being able to say> 
with ancient saints, "We know not what 
we shall be, but this we know ; that when 
He shall appear, we shall be like him, for 
we shall see him as he is ; '* ''when Christ, 
who is our life, shall appear, then shall 
we also appear with him in glory ; '' t he 
must postpone such precious hopes, and 
decline such sweet rejoicings, as too 
"full of comfort" for his notion of justifi- 
cation by faith, and bid them wait till 
after death, when the fearful question 
shall be settled — the question, not of the 

* 1 Pet. i; 8. 

i 1 John ili, 2; and Col. iii; 4. 



98 

existence of a true faith, but of the suffi- 
cient progression of that and other qual- 
ities for his entire justification through 
Christ, and consequently his *' title to 
the tree of life." * This does not seem 
like "^'the glorious liberty of the children 
of God," "wherewith Christ hath made 
them free." This does not sound like 
''the confidence and the rejoicing of hope^^^ 
which we are to hold "fast" and "firm 
unto the end."t This, I cannot think, 
was St. Paul's consolation when he said 
for himself and other Christians, "we 
knoio that when our earthly house of this 
tabernacle shall be dissolved, we have a 
building of God — eternal in the hea- 
vens." X 

The more a Christian grows in grace, 
the more deep becomes hia sense of the 
sinfulness of sin, the more clearly does 
he see the imperfections of all his works 
and graces, the less is he able to take 
comfort from any thing in himself for 

^ Rom. viii; 21^ and Gal. v; 1. 
t Heb. iii; 6. 
t 2 Cor. v; i. 



99 

peace with God, the more does he fieel 
his dependence upon the perfect merits 
of Jesus Christ. Then if his justifica- 
tion depend for its perfectness upon any 
advanced degree of personal attainment 
in grace, as the more he grows in grace, 
the less will he think of his attainment, 
and the more will he count himself not 
to ^^lave apprehended;'' so the less will 
be his ^'confidence and rejoicing of hope 
unto the end/' But ^Hhe path of the 
just is as the shining light that shineth 
more and more unto the perfect day." * 

Brethren, we must be careful to deliv- 
er fully and faithfully ^Hhe whole coun- 
sel of God" as well in regard to the 
privileges of his people, as their duties. 
The Christian's helmet is 'Hhe hope of 
salvation." ''The joy of the Lord is his 
strength." He runs the race with pa- 
tience by "looking unto Jesus," the 
^'finisher^^ as well as "author of our 
faith." His alacrity in duty; cheerful- 
ness in trial ; victory over the world, his 

* Appendix? C. 



100 

shield, against the fiery darts of the 
wicked, are in his 'booking for and hast- 
ing unto the glorious appearing of the 
great God and Saviour Jesus Christ/' 
Our sense of the love of Christ to us, in 
providing a salvation so perfect and joy- 
ful, ^'constraineth its to live unto him." 
It is a great thing for a minister to give 
to the people of God their ^'portion in 
due season'* of the quickening encour- 
agements and joyful assurances of the 
Gospel. Study, Brethren, to attain to 
^'the tongue of the learned,'' to know 
how to speak to all states of mind *^a 
word in season;" and *'the Lord give 
you understanding in all things." 

We have not yet directed your atten- 
tion particularly to the nature and office 
of Faith in the sinner's Justification. 
Our remaining time is very brief, but we 
cannot avoid a short notice of one point 
connected with that subject, as requiring 
our special care. 

There is a mode of representing the 
office of faith, which, though found, not 



101 

unfrequently, where the true doctrine of 
Justification, in other respects, is, for the 
most part, distinctly preached, we are far 
from considering as involving a mere 
difference of expression. We refer to 
the representation of the office of faith, 
as if it were efficacious unto Justification, 
not as a single act of the soul, by which 
we embrace Christ, operating merely as 
the appointed instrument of participation 
in his righteousness and justifying only 
because it lays hold on that righteous- 
ness; but as efficacious, because it is 
'Hhe root of all Christian virtues,^ * ^^the 
originating principle of love and every 
good work/^ and thus, in root and branch, 
the '' complex of Christianity T 

If this representation be correct, there 
is no propriety in saying that we are jus- 
tified by faith, which there would not be 

* Romanist writers speak of a ^^ fides formata *' or formed 
faith — that is a faith clothed in, or made perfect by, all the 
fruits it should produce, and so justifying by its fruitfulness. 
They say that when the Scriptures speak of justification by 
faith, they mean a faith not merely working by love, but 
formed loith love, and availing through love, and, of course, 
through all that fulfilling of the law, of which iove is thd 
parent grace. 



102 

also in saying that we are justified by 
''love, joy, peace, long-suffering," &c., by 
all those virtues of godly living which 
are ''the fruits of faith,'' and which 'fol- 
low after Justification." 

Now that the word faith is sometimes 
used in the Scriptures for the sum of 
Christianity, we freely grant ; that Justi- 
fying Faith is indeed the root of all 
christian virtues, so that they "do all 
spring out necessarily of a true and lively 
faith," we consider a most necessary 
truth, exceedingly to be insisted on with 
every soul to whom the Gospel is 
preached. But that faith derives any 
of its justifying virtue from these fruits, 
which are not its life, but its evidences 
of life, we hold it of great importance to 
deny, and on the contrary, to maintain 
that, though working hy love^ as it must 
if living, faith is effectual for justifica- 
tion, simply as an act of embracing 
Christ, in all his offices, and benefits, and 
requirements, whereby the sinner lays 
hold of his promises and puts on the 



103 

garment of his justifying righteousness.* 
To some it may seem that the diifer- 
ence between these divergent views is 
too sHght to be made of any importance. 
We apprehend, however, that it is the 
point of divergency where lies the un- 
seen origin of those very errors which 
have for their legitimate issue, when car-- 
r led out ^ nothing less than justification 
by inherent^ and therefore by our own^ 
righteousness. 

Two ways may separate at so small an 
angle, that to some it may seem of little 
consequence which you choose ; and for 
a long while, you may go on in one, 
without being very far separated from 
the other — but still they are getting 

* '* The word Faith (says Bishop Sanderson) first and most 
usually in the Apostolic writings, is used to signify that 
Theological Virtue or gracious habit ]wheTeby we embrace, 
with our minds and affections, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the 
alone Saviour of the world, casting ourselves wholly upon 
tho mercy of God through his merits for remission, and ever- 
lasting salvation. It is that which is commonly called a 
lively or justifying faith : whereunto are ascribed in Holy 
Writ, those many gracious effects of purifying the heart, 
adoption^ 4*0. — not as to their proper and primary cause; 
but as to the instrument loherehy we apprehend and apply 
Christ, whose merits and Spirit are the true causes of all 
those blessed effects*" Sermons: foL p. 60« 



104 

wider apart, and if the lines be carried 
out, they will become separated by the 
breadth of the earth. So we think con- 
cerning the divergency above described. 
These two views of faith seem to begin 
their separation at an angle scarcely 
measurable. Many an eye would not 
detect it. But the angle is there never- 
theless, and the minister, though he 
may never trouble his people with its 
measurement, should know the impor- 
tance of accuracy there, and govern his 
views and language accordingly. Two 
minds, taking the two ways from this 
point, may long continue very near one 
another in doctrine, and spirit, and fel- 
lowship; and because the tendencies of 
the way that leads erroneously may 
never be carried out, they may never be 
parted any further assunder. But evil 
tendencies are not always in such good 
hands. Let the wrong way be carried 
(mt. The issue will be, as appeared at 
the Reformation, and as now appears in 
the true Protestant and the consistent 



105 

Romanist, — the two poles of doctrincj, 
as far asunder as the North and South, — 
Justification by the righteousness of Christ 
imputed — Justification by our own right- 
emtsness inherent. 

It behoves us to provide against the 
beginnings of evil, in a matter of such 
vital importance as the Justification of 
the sinner. The Reformers, whether in 
England, or the continent, were very far 
from regarding the difference alluded to 
as of little moment.* A very special 
care is manifest in our Articles and 
Homilies to guard well this easily over- 
looked opening for the introduction of 
error, as one which though of little 
appearance may become of momentous 
consequence. 

First, we see this care in the wording 
of the Article on Justification, especially 
in the Latin original.t 

The Homily referred to, by the Arti- 
cle itself, for fuller explanation, is singu- 

* Appendix; D, 

f See Note on page 75, 



106 

larly solicitous of precision on this point. 
''It is all one sentence (says the third 
Part of the Homily on Salvation) to say, 
Faith without works^ and Faith only^ doth 
justify us/' And then, that we may 
know the meaning of the expression, 
faith without works ; proceeds the Hom- 
ily, ^' Faith doth directly send us to 
Christ for remission of sins; and by 
grace given us of God, we embrace the 
promise of God's mercy — which thing 
no7ie other of our virtues or worhs perfectly 
doth^ therefore the Scripture useth to say 
that faith without ivorks doth justify ^^ 
Again; ''Faith doth not shut out repen- 
tance, hope, love, dread and the fear of 
God to be joined with faith in every 
man that is justified ; hut it shutteth them 
out from the office of justifying. So that 
although they be all present together, 
yet they justify not altogether. ^^ Again; 
^'The true understanding of the doc- 
trine, we be justified freely by faith 
without works, is not that this our own 
act to believe in Christ, or this our faitli 



107 

in Christ which is in us, doth justify us 
and deserve our justification unto us — 
for that were to count ourselves to be 
justified by some act or virtue that is 
within ourselves — but, as St. John the 
Baptist, although he were never so virtu- 
ous and godly a man, yet in this matter 
of forgiving sin, he did put the people 
from him and appointed them unto 
Christ, saying — Behold, yonder is the 
Lamb of God, &c. : — even so, as great 
and as godly a virtue as the lively faith 
is, yet it putteth us from itself and remit- 
teth or appointeth us unto Christ. So 
that our faith in Christ, as it were, saith 
unto us : It is not I that take away your 
sins, but it is Christ only; and to him 
only I send you for that purpose, forsa- 
king therein all your good virtues, words, 
thoughts and works, and only putting 
your trust in Christ.'' * No language 
could more forcibly express the merely 
instrumental office of faith in our justifi- 
cation; or that "by faith only'^ is not 

* Homily on Salvation; P» ii» 



108 

meant a faith which is alone in respect to 
the connexion and company of good 
works, as its fruits ; but alone^ in res- 
pect to them, in its office of justifying ; — 
a faith which indeed '^worketh by love," 
and is followed by all good works, as of 
necessarry production, but, makes no 
use of any of them in aid of its justify- 
ing efficacy; that all such fruits of faith 
follow after ^ instead of co-operating unto 
Justification ; that even faith justifies 
not, under its character as a ivorh of 
obedience, one of the fruits of the spirit, 
but simply '^ under that relative office of 
receiving and applying Christ,^' the 
hand that takes of the righteousness of 
Christ and appropriates it unto us, while 
laying our sins on the head of that won- 
derful sacrifice; a hand without price, 
without desert, a sinful, as well as empty 
hand, meriting to be smitten dead for its 
own defects and the sinfulness of him 
whose hand it is, while, as God^s appoint- 
ed means, it puts on Christ and clothes 
the sinner in His righteousness. " It is a 



109 

childish objection (says Hooker) where- 
with, in the matter of Justification, men 
do please themselves, exclaiming that we 
ti'ead all christian virtues under our feet 
and require nothing but faith, because 
we teach that faith alone justifieth. 
Whereas by this speech we never meant 
to exclude either hope or charity from 
being always joined, as inseparable mates 
with faith in the man that is j ustified ; or 
works as being added as necessary duties, 
required at the hands of every justified 
man. But to show, that faith is the only 
JiOMdj which putteth on Christ for justifi- 
cation; and Christ the only garraent, 
which, being so put on, covereth the 
shame of our polluted natures/' "Faith 
alone justifies; (says Chillingworth) but 
not faith which is alone/* 

The representation of Justifying Faith 
by the figure of a hand^ putting on the 
righteousness of Christ, or of an eye 
looking unto Christ crucified, as the 
dying Israelites beheld the brazen ser- 
pent, is exceedingly common in our 



110 

ancient divines.* The following exam- 
ple will suffice. ^'In the point of accep- 
tation (says Usher) God hath given this 
poor virtue of faith a name above all 
names. Faith indeed, as it is a virtue, is 
poor and mean, and comes far short of 
love ; and therefore, by the Apostle, 
love is many degrees preferred before 
faith, because love fills the heart; but 
faith is but a hare hand. It lets all 
things fall, that it may fill itself with 
Christ. Nothing is required but a bare 
empty hand, which hath nothing to bring 
with it, though it be ever so weak, yet if 
it h^ve a hand to receive, it is alike pre- 
cious faith, that of the purest believer^ and 
the greatest saint J^ "The well is deep 
and this is the bucket v/ith which we 

* In the Catechism called King Edward the Sixth, faith is 
the hand *' which only taketh hold on the righteousness that 
is in Christ Jesus ; " Cranmer speaks of it as that by which 
we are '•''planted in Chist.'" Rom. vi ; 5. With Bishop 
Andrews, it sometimes is ^''the eye of the mind'' looking unto 
Jesus on the cross ; elsewhere, the liand with ichich loe " touch 
Christ,*' as the woman touched his garment, or by which we 
^' take hold of " and ^^apprehend" Christ, See Bishop An- 
drews' Sermons, pp. 3 ; 222 and 4 ; 242 and 3 ; 367. With 
Hooker, ihe same exprestiions are notorious. In the works 
of Hall, Usher, Reynolds, )^avenant, Hopkins, and Beveridge, 
they are very common. 



Ill 

must di'aw* This is the hand by which 
we must put on Christ.^^ * 

The views expressed, in such authori- 
ties as those we have cited, as to the 
instrumental office of faith in Justifica- 
tion, are derived directly from those por- 
tions of Scripture in which faith is spo- 
ken of in its relations to Christ as he is 
"made unto us of God — righteousness ^^ 
or as he is "the Lord our righteousness ; *' 
such, for example, as those passages in 
which the sinner is represented as recei- 
ving Christ, by faith ; t and those in 
which believing in him is used synoni- 
mously with ''coming^^ unto him,t or as 
a taking refuge in him, or fleeing unto 

* Usher's Sermons, No. xii. The writer knows not a 
better answer to the objection that Faith, when thus distin- 
>guished, to the exclusion of all other graces, in Justification, 
is not where St. Pa.ul places it, when he says ^^noio abideth 
Faith, Hope, Love, but the greatest of these is Love," than the 
iliomely language of good old Bishop Latimer — ^'though 
love be the chiefest, yet we must not attribute unto her, the 
office which pertaineth unto faith only. Like as I cannot 
say, 'The Mayor of Stamford must make me a pair of shoes 
because he is a greater man than the shoemaker is.' For the 
Mayor, though he be the greater man, yet it is not his office 
to make shoes : so though love be greater, yet it is not her office 
to save." 

t Johnl: 12. Col. ii; 6. 

t John vi: 35. 



112 

him for refuge.* More especially are 
such views sustained by the sacrificial 
types of the Mosaic law, as in the stri- 
king of the blood of the Paschal lamb 
upon the door-posts of the Israelites; 
confessedly typical of the application, by 
faith^ of the blood of Christ to our souls : 
also in the manner of laying the sins of 
the people on the scapegoat, by laying 
tiie hand on the head of the animal and 
making confess'imi of sin; an acknowl- 
edged and most conspicuous type of 
Christ as our righteousness, and illustra- 
tion of the faith by which we are made 
partakers of him.t 

But the remarkable allusion of the 
Saviour to the brazen serpent as a type 
of his own lifting up on the cross for the 
sins of the world, most undeniably 
teaches that, as the dying Israelites looked 
upon that sign, lifted up on high, for the 
remedy of their wounds, and were healed, 
because they looked-. So the perishing sin- 

• Heb. vi; 11. 

t See Beveridge's Sermons, No. 69. 



113 

ner is to partake of the saving mercies 
of Christ by a faith that shall look unto 
Him, on the cross, as all his righteous- 
ness. Thus faith is the eye that ''beholds 
the Lamb of God" — as well as the hand 
that ''lays hold on the hope set before 
us." This figure of the brazen serpent 
is more frequently employed perhaps 
than any other, by our ancient divines, 
as a representation of faith, and is very 
conspicuous in the Homilies of our 
Church.* 

And now, my dear Brethren, I beg to 
say a few words, in conclusion, concern- 
ing the "fruits of faith which follow after 
Justification," that life of holy obedience, 

* See it well carried out in Bishop Hooper on Justifica- 
tion. 

In the second book of Homilies, we read: **You have 
heard the means whereby we must apply the fruits and mer- 
its of Christ's death unto us, so that it may work the salva- 
tion of our-souls: namely, a sure, steadfast and grounded 
faith. For as all they who beheld steadfastly the brazen ser- 
pent were healed and delivered at the very sight thereof — 
even so, all they which behold Christ crucified with a true 
and lively faith, shall undoubtedly be delivered from the 
grievous wounds of the soul, be they never so deadly or so 
many in number.'* Homily on the Passion; Part ii. 

On the nature and office of Justifying Faith, see Bishop 
Hopkins' Works, 8vo. vol. ii, p. 388. Bishop Reynolds' 
Works, p. 184. Bishop Beveridge's Sermons, No. 134 and 
135. Works of Thomas Seott, vol. vii. 



114 

without which we can no more see the 
Lord, than we could see Him without a 
living, holy faith. 

That the doctrine of Justification, 
which we have delivered, when unre- 
servedly preached, is liable to be abused 
by those who are ever ready to draw 
encouragements to continuance in im- 
penitence, from the mercies of God, 
cannot be questioned. *^It is impossible 
to preach the gospel, but that a carnal 
and sinful heart may wrest it so as to 
suck poison, instead of honey from it; 
such being apt to take all occasions of 
turning the grace of God into wanton- 
ness. And therefore the Apostle him- 
self, when he treated upon this subject, 
even our Justification by faith in Christ, 
was still forced to prevent this object 
by a peremptory denial of the conse- 
quence.'* * Precisely the evils which by 
many are supposed to result from the un- 
reserved exhibition of this doctrine, were 
laid to the charge of the same, as 

* Beveridge's Sermons; 134 



115 

preached by St. Paul. He denied the 
charge, but not the doctrine. He de- 
nied that the accuser had rightly inter- 
preted its proper inferences and effects ; 
but persisted, through evil report and 
good, in preaching still the same doc- 
trine. The abuses were of man's cor^. 
ruption; the doctrine was of God's wis- 
dom, and grace, and holiness. He might 
as well have ceased to declare the plen- 
teous goodness — the wonderful long-suf- 
fering — the infinite mercy of God: For 
out of all is extracted, by the subtle 
devices of human depravity, the very 
poison that makes men sleep so securely 
in their sins. But while we must faith- 
fully imitate the example of St. Paul, in 
suffering no consideration to prevent us 
from assigning to this doctrine a most 
prominent place in our ministry, as em- 
phatically "the word of reconciliation'' 
which, as Ambassadors of Christ, we are 
to proclaim to all people ; we are bound, 
like St. Paul, to see to it, most anxiously, 
not only that it be so delivered as to be 



116 

as much as possible protected from mis- 
understandings and perversions, but so 
also that it may be productive, through 
the Spirit of Christ, of true holiness of 
heart and life in those who profess to 
embrace it. We must take care that in 
our own hearts, in all our words, we do 
manifestly insist, as zealously, and with 
as nluch sense of necessity, upon per- 
sonal holiness, to make us ^'meet^^^ as 
upon a justifying righteousness, not per- 
sonal, to give us a title, *Ho be partakers 
with the saints in light/* Justification, 
by faith without works, is no more to be 
preached than sanctifi cation, which em- 
braces faith and all good works. The 
righteousness of Christ, imputed, is one 
part of salvation. It delivers us from 
the condemnation of sin. The righteous- 
ness of Christ, dwelling in us, by His 
Spirit, is another, and equally important 
part of our salvation. It delivers us 
from the dominion oi sin. ^*We are far 
from that libertinism to conclude, that 
because Christ hath obeyed the whole 



117 

law for us therefore we are exempted 
from obedience. He hath done for us 
whatever was required in order to 7nerit 
and satisfaction; yet he hath not done 
for us whatever was required in order to 
obedience and a holy conversation; he 
hath done the work of a Mediator and 
Redeemer; yet he never did the work 
of a sinner, that stood in need of a 
Redeemer, so as to excuse him from it. 
And, therefore, though men may be jus- 
tified by a surety, yet they cannot be 
sanctified by a surety ; but still holiness, 
obedience, and good works, must be 
personal and not imputative/^ * Christ 

* Bishop Hopkins' Works, 8 vo., vol. 11, p. 394. 

^'Although it hath pleased the great God, of his infinite 
mercy, in the covenant of grace, to entail justification upon 
our faith in his promises only, and not upon obedience to his 
precepts, as he had in the covenant of works entailed it, 
upon obedience to his precepts and not upon faith in his 
promises only ; yet it doth not follow that we are freed more 
from obedience now, than we were before. No: but as 
when we were to be justified by our works, we were then 
bound to believe as well as to obey, though we were to be 
justified by our obedience, and not by our faith; so now we 
are to be justified by faith, we are still bound to obey as well 
as to believe, though we are justified by our faith only, and 
not by our obedience. So that though our justification doth 
pardon the sins we have committed heretofore, yet it does 
not give us liberty to commit sin hereafter. No : but now 
we are justified by faitlj, without 'vv;orks5 we are bound as 



118 

is become the Author of eternal salva- 
tion unto all them that obey himJ' His 
people must be *'a peculiar people, — a 
holy nation, — purified unto himself — 
zealous of good works." St, Paul 
preached that we are saved ''by grace 
tJirough faith^ not of works ^'^^ but not 
without immediately adding that we are 
"created in Christ Jesus unto good works, 
which God hath ordained that we should 

much to obey, as if we were justified by works without faith. 
And the reason is, because, though we be justified by faith 
only, and not by works, yet we cannot be justified by such 
a faith as is without works. As works without faith cannot 
justify us; so neither can faith without works; not because 
works help to justify us with faith, but because faith is no 
justifying faith without works; or rather because we can 
have no such true and lively faith, as can justify us without 
works, but we shall necessarily also have works accompany- 
ing our faith. Though still it is not by our works that 
accompany our faith, but our faith oniy that is accompanied 
by our works, that we are accounted righteous before God." — 
Beveridge on Article xii. 

<*lf faith in Christ be considered a reliance on him for 
salvation from future punishment, without heartily seeking 
to him for deliverance from sin and from this present evil 
world, or falling in with the whole design of his coming in 
the flesh; no man is or can be warranted thus to believe on 
him: for this is a mere selfish desire, and presumptuous con- 
fidence of escaping misery and obtaining happiness, without 
the least real understanding of the nature, or value for, the 
blessings of that holy salvation which the Scriptures pro- 
pose to us. For in fact, it is nothing better than the cry of 
the evil spirits, when they besought Christ not to torment 
them; except as these too well knew God's purposes to expect 
final impunity." — Thos. Scott's Treatise on the Warrant arid 
Nature of FaitL 



119 

walk in them/* ** Herein, (said the 
Lord,) is my Father glorified that ye 
bring forth rmich fruity so shall ye be 
my disciples/' 

Brethren, we come far short of the 
spirit of our ministry, if our hearts be 
not intently fixed upon the promotion of 
personal holiness in the lives of our peo- 
ple; we fail entirely in the effect of our 
ministry if our doctrine be not success- 
ful in securing it. But how is this 
blessed result to be secured? How shall 
we preach the way of a sinner's Justifi- 
cation by faith, so as the most success- 
fully to promote in^him *Hhe sanctifica- 
tion of the Spirit unto obedience?'' 

I answer, not by any reserve^ on the 
subject of Justification, exhibiting that 
doctrine only partially and fearfully, in 
reduced terms, and in a background 
position, as if afraid of the fulness in 
which the Scriptures declare it to all 
who read or hear them. Reserve here, 
is reserve in preaching *' Christ, and him 
crucified." Our grand message, every 



120 

where, is: — *'Be it known unto you, 
men and brethren, that through this 
man is preached unto you the forgive- 
ness of sin: and by him all that be- 
lieve are justified from all things from 
which they could not be justified by the 
law of Moses." * St. Paul waited not 
till men were well initiated into christian 
mysteries, before he unveiled the grand 
subject of atonement and justification 
through the blood of Christ. No — the 
gospel plan of promoting sanctification 
is just the opposite of holding in obscu- 
rity any feature of the doctrine of Justi- 
fication. It is sunply to preach that 
doctrine most fully, in all its principles 
and connexions ; in all its grace, and all 
its works; in its utmost plainness and 
simplicity ; so that whatever leads to it, 
whatever is contained in it, and whatever 
legitimately results from it, whether it 
be sin and condemnation, as needing an 
imputed righteousness ; the love of God, 
as providing that righteousness in his 



121 . 

only begotten Son ; the blessed Redeem- 
er, as offering up himself a sacrifice to 
obtain it; faith, as embracing it freely; 
hope, as resting upon it joyfully; the 
promises, as assuring the believer per- 
fectly; the sacraments, as signing and 
sealing them effectually to those who 
duly receive them; a new heart, as the 
essential companion of a living faith; 
unreserved obedience, as the necessary 
expression of a new heart; obedience 
springing from the love of God, in 
Christ; keeping its eye of faith, for 
motive, strength and acceptance, upon 
the cross, and embracing in its walk, all 
departments of duty ; all this, as coming 
legitimately within the embrace of the 
full preaching of Justification by faith, is 
the way to promote, through the effec- 
tual working of the Spirit of God upon 
the conscience and heart of the sinner, 
his sanctification through the truth. 

We cannot preach the righteousness of 
Christ, for Justification, with any pro- 
priety, unless, as the first thing, to show 



122 

the sinner's need thereof, we preach the 
pghteousness of the law in the condem- 
jnation of every soul that sinneth. No 
(more can we preach the righteousness of 
Christ, for justification, with any justice, 
unless, beside its need and nature, we 
preach its fruits, and trace them out in 
all their branches, and show how they all 
spring out only and necessarily of a true 
and lively faith. Thus does the doctrine 
9f faith embrace, in one hand, the right- 
eousness of the law in the condemnation 
of the sinner, bringing him to Christ 
that he may be justified by faith," and 
in the other, that same righteousness, in 
the sanctification of the believer, wit- 
nessing that he is in Christ, and is justi- 
fied by faith. 

Does St. Paul describe the blessedness 
of those "who are in Christ Jesus" — 
witnessing that *'to them there is no 
condemnation?" He adds immediately 
— ^^who walk not after the fleshy hut after 
the spirit^^ thus insisting on the essential 
connexion between a justifying faith and 



123 

a spiritual lite. Let this text be carried 
out by the preacher. Let him show 
how Christ, if ever ''made unto us, of 
God, by imputation, righteousness ^^^ must 
also be made unto us, by the indwelling 
of His Spirit, sanctification ; both equal- 
ly, though differently, necessary for final 
redemption; both equally, though differ- 
ently, derived from Christ, through his 
obedience unto death ; both obtained by 
the same faith, at the same time; dis- 
tinct in office, but, like the water and 
the blood from the side of the Lamb of 
God, inseparable; so that by the blessed 
union of justification and holiness, peace 
and purity, in all the way of the believer, 
he may be complete in Christ Let the 
preacher dwell minutely upon the deveh 
opmentSj as well as the principle, of 
personal sanctification. The planting of 
the root of faith does not supersede the 
necessity of training and pruning the 
branches of obedience. It follows not 
in this husbandry, any more than in any 
other, that if the root be good, the 



124 

branches will all take, of themselves, pre- 
cisely the right direction. We must 
copy the ministry of the Apostles in the 
minute tracing out of the fruits of faith 
in all the ways of holy living — in the 
affections, desires, tempers, habits, con- 
versation, and all relative duties.* To 
expect the issues of life without seeing 
to the indwelling of the principle of life^ 
is an error only next worse to that of 
being content with the latter, without 
attending carefully to all its processes in 
the former. Parental care is not satisfied 
when the child is evidently governed by 
a filial love. It brings line, upon line, to 
guide, instruct, admonish, remind, and 
exhort that love. So is "the nurture 
and admonition'' by which the minister 
must seek to lead out the great principle 
of "faith that w^orketh by love'' — bring- 
ing the various and minute applications 
of that love, "seasonably to the remem- 
brance" of the believer, holding up con- 

^ See examples in Rom. xii and xiii; 1 Cor. xiii; Eph. v 
and vi; Phil, iv; Col. iii; I Thess. iv and v; 1 Tim. v and 
vi> Heb, xii and xiii; James, passim. &c. 



125 

tinually to an eye, prone to dullness, and 
a heart, prone to negligence, the law ; 
the precept of holiness, '^as it is in 
Jesus, ^' commended by his authority, 
illustrated in his example, expounded in 
his word, enforced by his love, and ful- 
filled in us by the indwelling of His 
Spirit. If we have it not to urge, as a 
motive to obedience, that it will obtain or 
promote the sinner's justification, what 
matters it? We have it to urge, that 
without obedience, there can be neither 
the living faith that justifies, nor the true 
holiness that makes us meet for the pres- 
ence of God ; we have the duty also, as 
well as the necessity of unreserved obe- 
dience, to urge upon the heart and con- 
science, with just as much authority as if 
works, instead of faith, were the only 
way of Justification ; we have more ; we 
have also the love of God in Christ, pre- 
paring for our ruined souls, his only 
begotten Son to be the sacrifice for our 
sins^ and the amazing^ love of Christ, 
bringing him to be obedient unto the 



126 

4eath of the cross for us miserable sin* 
ners. And thence, from his agony and 
bloody sweat, his cross and passion, 
springs the constraining motive to a dili- 
gent, devoted, cheerful, filial, zealous 
obedience, in all things. **The love of 
Christ constraineth us,'' said Christians 
of old, ^'because we thus judge that if 
one died for all, then were all dead, and 
that he died for all, that they which live 
should live not unto themselves, but unto 
Him that died for them and rose again/' * 
Here is love fulfilling the law^ banishing 
the living unto ourselves; substituting 
devotedness to Christ ; discerning its 
conclusive reason, obtaining its all-pow- 
erful motive by the eye of faith which 
beholds the love of Christ dying for the 
ungodly, and thence begins immediately 
to work hy love^ and keep his command- 
ments. 

Such is the inseparable connection be- 
tween the faith which looks unto Jesus 
and justifies the soul, through a right* 

* 2 Cor, v; 14, 15. 



127 

ousness imputed, and the love that equal 
ly looks unto Jesus and bears witness tc 
the living power of that faith and glori 
fies God, by a righteousness, personal and 
inherent, doing whatsoever he hath com 
manded.* 

And, now, my beloved Brethren, see 
ing what infinitely momentous truth is 
entrusted to our stewardship; what emi- 
nent wisdom, and faithfulness, and care- 
fulness, are necessary that we may be 
**good stewards of the manifold grace of 
God,'' and how utterly impossible it is 
that, by our own strength or guidance, 
we should fulfil our solemn charge; let 
us most diligently study, most carefully 
watch, most earnestly strive, and most 
fervently pray that, as wi^e master-build-- 
ers, we may be enabled through the Spirit 
of the Lord ** working in us mightily,'* 
to make full proof our ministry, to the 
edification of the Church, the saving of 
souls, and the glory of God. — Anien. 

* See Treatises by Thos. Scott, on Repentance, the Na- 
ture and Office of Faith, and Growth in Grace, (Works, voL 
vii,) for an edifying discussion of these subjects. 



APPENDIX. 



A. 

A Mitigated Law — page 58. 

There is a scheme which maintains that instead 
t)f the old law, which required perfect obedience, 
the gospel has put us under a new law, which only 
requires a sincere, though imperfect obedience, in 
accommodation to our infirmities ; and that Christ 
died to atone for the imperfections of such obedi- 
ence, that it might be accepted as if it were perfect. 
But we would ask, what kind of a law is that 
which does not require obedience to all its require- 
merits ? If any part is not required to be kept, is 
that properly law? Can any one define how far 
that new law requires obedience, and how much of 
it need not be obeyed? Or is the measure of im- 
perfection left for each of us to fix according to his 
own bias and wisdom? But again: If Christ died 
to atone for the imperfections of onr obedience, 
what law have these imperfections violated, for 
" sin is the transgression of law ? " They cannot 
have violated this new law, for that only requires ao 
imperfect obedience; and the old law they cannot 
have broken, for that, according to this scheme, is 
abrogated. And if these imperfections have vio- 



130 

lated no law, old or new, how are they sinful, how 
are they imperfections, how do they need the atone- 
ment of Christ? It is maintained that the old law 
was abrogated because it would be unjust to require 
of us what, in our present, fallen state, we have 
no ability to fulfil; and that Christ died to satisfy 
the law, so that we being delivered from its obliga- 
tions, might be placed under another, adapted to our 
infirmities, which should require only imperfect 
obedience. Then again we ask why should Christ 
die that we might come under the new law, when, 
according to the above view, it would have been 
unjust to require obedience to the old and stricter 
law? Yv'hy must the Saviour die that we might 
not be bound to a law, to which it would be injus- 
tice to hold us, whether he died or not? How dif- 
ferent all this from the doctrine of our Homilies — 
which represent all men as bound to the fulfilment 
of the whole of God's Law; as incapable of justifi- 
cation by their own v/orks, because they have all 
broken that Law; (how break it if not under it?) 
that Christ has ''paid their ransom by his deaths 
and for them fulfilled the law in his life, so that 
now, in him, and by him, every true Christian 
man may be called a fulfiller of the Law.'^'' — Hom- 
ily of Salvation, P. 1, 

The writer would take this opportunity of com- 
mending, to the studious reader, Bishop Reynolds' 
Treatises on Sbi; on the Law; on the Life of Christ ; 
(in the soul of the believer) Bishop Hopkins' Dis- 
courses on the Law, and on the Doctrine of tJie 



131 

Two Covenants; and Simeon on the Laio and tlie 
Gospel, 

Since the subject of the above remarks is so 
evidently important to clear views of Justification, 
the writer would request particular attention to 
the following passages from Bishops Beveridge 
and Hopkins, two great contemporaneous lights in 
the latter part of the seventeenth century. 

Bishop Beveridge — '^I cannot look upon Christ 
as having made full satisfaction to God's Justice 
for me, unless he had performed the obedience I 
ov/e to God's laws, as well as borne the punish- 
ment that is due to my sins; for though he should 
have borne my sins, I cannot see how that could 
denominate me righteous or obedient to the law, 
so as to entitle me to eternal life, according to the 
old law — ''Do this and live'''^ — which old cove- 
nant is not disannulled or abrogated hy the covenant 
of grace^ but rather established, Romans iii, 31, 
especially as to the obedience it requires from us 
in order to the life it piomiseth; otherwise the 
laws of God would be mutable, and so come short 
of the laws of the very Medes and Persians, which 
altered not; Obedience^ therefore, is as strictly re- 
quired under the New, as it was under the Old Tes- 
tament; but with this difference; — there, obedience 
in our own persons was required, as absolutely ne- 
cessary; here obedience in our Surety is accepted 
as completely sufEclent." — Private Thoughts^ Art. 
viii. 

Bishop Hopkins — "If it be objected that tbe 



132 

Rule of our Righteousness is not the Law of 
Works, but the Law of Faith: that the Covenant 
of Works is abolished, and that of Grace succeeds 
in the place thereof, which requires faith, repen- 
tance, and sincere obedience, as the conditions of 
our justification; and that these are now the Right- 
eousness by which we are justified; I answer: 

" That the Covenant of Works is only so far forth 
repealed and abrogated, as it did require a Personal 
Righteousness to our Justification; hut it is not re- 
pealed^ as it did require a Perfect Righteousness. 

"God did never so far disannul the Covenant of 
Works, that, whether or no, his Law were obeyed, 
or his Justice satisfied, yet we should be accounted 
righteous: but, it is only thus far repealed by the 
Covenant of Grace, that, though we cannot per- 
fectly obey nor fully satisfy in our own persons^ 
yet we may be pardoned and accepted through 
the satisfaction and obedience of our Surety. So 
that, even now, under the Covenant of Grace, no 
righteousness can avail to our Justification, but 
what, for the matter of it, is perfectly conformable 
to the Law of Works. And, when we say that 
the Covenant of Works is abrogated, and that we 
are not to expect Justification according to that 
Covenant, the meaning is not, that the matter of 
that covenant is repealed, but only the personal 
obligation relaxed: for, still, it is the righteousness 
of the Law which justifies us, though performed 
by another. And, therefore, in this sense, whoso- 
ever are justified, it is according to the Covenant 



133 

of works: that is, it is by that righteousness, 
which for the substance and matter of it, this 
covenant did require. 

"For the proof of this, which is of very great 
moment for the clearing the doctrine of Justifica- 
tion, consider, 

" 1. That there can be no sufficient reason given 
why our Saviour should suffer the penalty, who 
never transgressed the precepts of the Law, unless 
it be that his sufferings might be our satisfaction. 

"Consequently, if Christ died for us, only to 
satisfy divine justice in our stead, and as our 
Surety, it must necessarily follow, that this his 
death is our righteousness of Satisfaction, accor- 
ding to the Law and Covenant of Works. 

"2. That Law,, according to the letter of which 
the far greater part of the world shall be judged^ 
cannot be an "abrogated, a repealed law. 

"But, though true believers shall indeed be 
judged only according to the favourable construc- 
tion of the Law of Works, which is the accepting 
the righteousness of their Surety for their own; 
yet all the rest of the world (and how vast a num- 
ber is it!) shall be juged according to the strict let- 
ter of the Covenant of Works, and must either 
stand or fall, according to the sentence of it: they 
must either produce a perfect sinless righteous- 
ness, wrought out personally by themselves; or 
else suffer the vengeance of eternal death. Indeed, 
all men, at the Last Day, shall be judged by the 
Covenant of WorJks : and^, wbea they shall stand 



134 

before the tribunal of God, this Law will be then 
produced, and every man's title tried by itj and 
whoever cannot plead a righteousness conformable 
to the tenor and import of it, must expect nothing 
else but the execution of the punishment threat- 
ened. The righteousness of Christ will be the 
believer's plea; and accepted, because it fully an- 
swers the matter of the Law. The rest of the 
world can produce no righteousness of their own, 
for all have sinned; nor can they plead this of 
Christ, because they have no faith, which alone 
can give this title and convey it to them: so that 
their case is desperate, their doom certain, and 
their punishment remediless and insupportable; 
and this, according to the tenor of the Covenant 
of Works, Bo this or Suffer this^ by which God 
will proceed in judging of the world. 

"Consider, again, 

"3. That the matter and substance of the Cove- 
nant of Works is nothing else but the Moral Law, 
(as I shewed before) the law of holiness and obe- 
dience: the obligation of which continues still 
upon us; and the least transgression of which is 
threatened with death and condemnation. 

" 'What, then, doth God speak contradictions? 
and, in the law of Works, tell us he will punish 
every transgressor; and, in the Law of Faith, tell 
us he will not punish every transgressor?' No, 
certainly; his truth and his justice are immutable; 
and, what he has once spoken with his mouth, he 
will fulfil with his hand. And his veracity is 



135 

obliged to punish every ofTender; for God can be 
no more false in his* threatenings, than in his 
promises: and, therefore, he punisheth those 
whom he pardons, or else he could not pardon. 
He pardons their Persons, according to his Cove- 
nant of Grace: he punisheth their Surety, accord- 
ing to his Covenant of Works: which, in a foren- 
sic sense, being the punishment of them, they 
have in him made a satisfaction to the justice of 
God, and thereby have obtained a righteousness 
according to the terms of the Covenant of Works. 
"I have the longer insisted on this Sixth Posi- 
tion, because it is the very critical point of the 
doctrine of Justification, and the very hinge upon 
which all the controversies concerning it do turn.*^' 
— Works, vol ii, j5p. 317,-320. 




B. 

Imputed Righteousness — page 84? 

The sense in which Imputation of Rigybous- 
ness is held in the Articles and Homilies, and by a 
glorious company of learned and godly divines, of 
our Church, is simply that of setting down to the 
personal account of the believing sinner, who has 
no righteousness of his own to plead, hefore his 
Judge, all that Christ, as his Surety, has done and 
suffered in his stead. It is the setting down, or 
accounting, of righteousness to the believer, in 
reference to the charge of guilt before God, as 



136 

Judge; and has no reference to the making of the 
believer personally holy. It constitutes the belie- 
ver forensically righteous — so that there remains 
no condemnation for him; it does not make him 
personally righteous, so that the law has no claim 
upon his strict obedience. In what respect the 
righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, appears, 
from considering in what respect our sin was im- 
puted to Christ. The sense of the Church is thus 
explained by Bishop Beveridge on the eleventh 
Article; where, having quoted the text which 
speaks of Christ as having been ''made sin for us, 
that we might he raade the righteousness of God in 
him,'^'' (2 Cor. v, 21) he says: "How was Christ 
made sin for us? Not by our sins inherent in him, 
that is horrid blasphemy; but by our sins imputed 
to him, that is true divinity. And as he was made 
sin for us, not by the inhesion of our sins in him, 
b ut by the imputation of our sins to him; so we 
aremi|e the righteousness of God in him, by the 
imputAtion of his righteousness to us, not by the 
inhesion of his righteousness in us. He was ac- 
counted as a sinner, and therefore punished for us; 
we are accounted as righteous, and therefore glo- 
rified in him. He was accounted as a sinner, for 
us, and therefore he was condemned, we are ac- 
counted as righteous in him; and so we are justi- 
fied. And this is the right notioa of justification, 
as distinguished from sanctifi,cati>on. Not as if 
these two were ever severed or divided in their 
subjects; no, every oae that is justified is also. 



137 

sanctified; and every one that is sanctified, is also 
justified. But yet, the acts of sanctification and 
justification are two distinct things; for the one 
denotes the imputation of righteousness to us; the 
other, the implantation of righteousness in us. 
And, therefore, though they be both the acts of 
God; yet the one is the act of God, towards us; the 
other is the act of God in us. By our sanctifica- 
tion, we are made righteous in ourselves, but not 
accounted righteous by God; by our justification 
we are accounted righteous by God, but not made 
righteous in ourselves," — Beveridge on the Articles, 
It is very common, in our old divines, to refer to 
the case of Onesimus, in the Epistle to Philemon, 
v. 18, as an apt illustration of the doctrine of im- 
putation. Thus, Archbishop Usher: "Account: ihe 
word is used in the Epistle to Philemon, where St. 
Paul saith, 'If he hath wronged ihee, or oweth thee 
ought, put that on mine account.' A man's sin 
being thus put on Christ's account, he is accepted 
of God, as freely as if he had never offended him. 
Now, this is done, by transferring the debt from 
one person to another; so that we see this impu- 
tation of sin to Christ, and of Christ's righteous- 
ness to us is most necessary. It must be so: and 
if there were no testimony for it in Scripture, yet 
reason showeth that there can be no righteousness, 
but by God's acceptation of us, in Christ, as if we 
had never sinned." Here is a transfer, not of the 
debt of future oiedience, on the part of Onesimus, 
to his master, Philemon; but of the debt of punish- 



138 

ment or satisfaction^ for past disohedience. Thus, 
Imputation of Righteousness, from Christ to the 
sinner, and the transfer of our account of guilt, and 
debt of satisfaction to him, for past disobedience? 
in no sense involves the transfer of our debt of 
obedience for the future; a duty which remains as 
perfect, as if no Redemption had been provided, or 
as if our future justification depended exclusively 
upon sinless obedience. 

The author reserves, for another opportunity, 
the presentation of a catena Patrum, or catenation 
of the concurrent opinions of the standard writers 
of the English Church, and perhaps he will add 
those of Fathers more ancient, in reference to the 
subject of imputed righteousness. For the present? 
as the name of the learned and holy Bishop An- 
drews is professedly of great weight in the recent 
school of Oxford divinity, whose chief writers 
reject with loathing, the doctrine of Justification 
hy reputed righteousness only, as it is presented 
in the Charge, from Hooker, Usher, Hall, &c., and 
above, from Beveridge; calling it, precisely as do 
Socinians, on one side, and Papists on the other, a 
^'visionary, arbitrary, tyranical system," ''an un- 
real righteousness, and a real corruption," ''a bond- 
age to shadows," a "feeding on shells and husks,'' 
"a new gospel," ^ a system to which Mr. Newman, 
whose words we have thus quoted, says, ^'Away 
ijoitli itP'^ just as the Church of Rome pronounces 
^^ anathema'^'' upon it, and as Socinus branded it as 
* Newinan*s Lectures on Justification, p. ^1. 



139 

f<Bda^ execranda, pernitiosa, deiestanda; the author 
will content himself with exhibiting here the doc- 
trine of Bishop Andrews. 

"In the Scripture, there is a double Righteous- 
ness set down, both in the Old and in the New 
Testament. In the Old, and in the very first 
place that Eighteousness is named in the Bible: 
'Abraham believed, and it was accounted unto him 
for righteousness.' A Righteousness accounted! 
And again, (in the very next line) it is mentioned, 
'Abraham will te^ich his house to do Eighteousness.'' 
A righteousness done! In the New Testament, 
likewise. The former, in one chapter, (Rom. iv) 
no fewer than eleven times; Reputatum est illi ad 
justitiam — 'It is accounted to him for righteousness'^ 

— a Reputed Righteousness! The latter in St. 
John — 'He that doeth righteousness, is righteous' 

— 'a Righteousness done! Of these, the latter. 
Philosophers themselves conceived, and acknov/1- 
edged; the other is proper to Christians only, and 
altogether unknown in Philosophy. The one is a 
quality of the party. The other an act of the 
Judge declaring or pronouncing righteous. The 
one, ours by influence or infusion; the other, by 
account^ or imputation. That both these there are^ 
THERE IS NO QUESTION." We SCO, then, that among 
Protestants, there was no division of opinion on 
the reality of imputed righteousness^ in the times of 
Bishop Andrews. Papists and Socinians cast out 
the name as evil — and so do Oxford divines now — 
but then it was the via media^ the dividing ridge 



140 

between the two valleys of the shadow of death — 
the one, the Popish doctrine of justification by in- 
fused righteousness, or sanctification, the other, the 
Socinian, of salvation by repentance without any 
justification through the merits of Christ. 

But Bishop Andrews proceeds — He is upon the 
blessed name of Jesus — ''Jehovah our Righteous- 
ness'^'^ — and he says the question is, "whether of 
these two righteousnesses, the Prophet principally 
meaneth in this name — whether, (he says,) it is the 
righteousness that will stand against the Law, or 
conscience, Satan, sin, the gates of Hell, and the 
power of darkness; and so stand, that we may be 
delivered by it, from death, despair and damna- 
tion; and entitled, by it, to life, salvation, and hap- 
piness eternal; that is righteousness indeed; that 
is it we seek for, if we may find it; and that is not 
this latter, (Righteousness infused) but the former 
ONLY, (Righteousness imputed,) and therefore this 
is the true interpretation of 'Jehovah our JRighi- 
eousnessJ^ '^*' "Our righteousness in the Abstract^ 
and not in the Concrete; our Righteousness itself not 
the Maker of us Righteous, He is made unto us, by 
God, very righteousness itself What can be further 
said? To have him ours, not to make us Righteous, 
but to make us Righteousness, and that, not any 
other but the Righteousness of God; the wit of 
man can devise no more.'' All this he proceeds 
to illustrate, as do Beveridge, Usher, Hopkins, 
Hooker, &c. &c., by the strong forensic view of 
Justification in Rom. viii, 32, (fee, q,nd agaia from 



141 

the antithesis of Justification to Condemnation, in 
the New Testament; which view, he says, is so 
necessary, that without it, '^we shall never take 
the state of this question right, nor truly understand 
the mysterij of this name, Jehovah our Righteous- 
ness?'^ This imputed righteousness, which Oxford 
divines call unreal, he calls a ''positive righteous- 
ness,'' and says that they who imagine that any 
other will serve them for justification, do ''shrink 
up that blessed Name, and though they learn the 
fall sound, yet take away half the sense of it — 
they spoil Christ of one-half of His Name?'^ " This 
nipping at the name of Christ,'' he adds, "is for 
no other reason, but that we may have some hon- 
our ourselves, out of our Righteousness?'' Then 
he shows, from Bellarmine, &c., how all this char- 
acterizes Popery.^ 

Under a solemn sense of the awfulness of the 
error which rejects the reputative or accounted 
Righteousness of Christ for Justification, and 
gives the glory to any other, in whole or in part; 
solemnly believing that w^hen we lose this imputa- 
tive doctrine of Justification, we lose the Palladium 
of Christianity — the Ark of the Covenant and 
the Mercy-Seat, and that then we may write upon 
our door-posts, as Vespasian upon his triumphal 
banners, after his legions had burned up the Holy 
of Holies, JuDCEA Devicta; under this serious be- 
lief, the author, after such a noble testimony of 
holy Andrews, cannot avoid exclaiming, in the 
* Bishop Andrews' Sermon on Jehovah our Righteousness. 



142 

words of his admirable contemporary. Bishop 
Hall, on precisely the same subject: "Let the vain 
sophistry of carnal minds deceive itself with idle 
subtleties, and seek to elude the plain' truth of 
God with shifts of wit: we bless God for so clear 
a light; and dare cast our souls upon the sure 
evidence of God, attended with the perpetual evi- 
dence of his ancient Church.'"^ 



C. 
Progressive Justification — page 99. 

There are some who maintain what they call a 
progressive justification^ who yet deny that they 
mean by it any thing short of entire justification, 
or that they suppose a believer can have any higher 
■degree of justification in consequence of an in- 
crease of faith or other Christian graces. They 
■call li progressive (they say) because when a belie- 
ver commits sin, he must needs go again by re- 
pentance and faith, to Christ, and obtain a new 
justification from that sin; and thus his justifica- 
tion goes on, as his sins go on, and since he will 
not cease to sin, to the end of life, he must be jus- 
tified again, and again, to the end of life; and so his 
justification is progressive. But, supposing, for 
the present, that this view is entirely correct; we 
lament the application of the word, because of the 
great difficulty of preventing misunderstandings 
* Works, is, p. 244. . 



143 

and abuses. When we speak of Sanctijication, as 
progressive, we use common language, and are 
universally understood as indicating by the phrase, 
not a continuance of holiness, from hour to hour, but 
an increase in the degree^ a growth in the power and 
purity of holiness. In consequence of this uni- 
versal understanding of a common expression, he 
that speaks of progressive justification^ though 
he should mean no such thing as progressive in 
degree^ must nevertheless count upon being so un- 
derstood, and upon being the instrument of pro- 
moting, through an almost necessary misinterpre- 
tation, a doctrine which he does not hold. 

But as to the view just given, is it correct to say 
that, whenever a believer sins, he must be justified 
anew? The question is equivalent to this: Does 
his justified state cease when he sins anew, so that 
he comes unto condemnation again, and must be 
justified again; precisely as if he had never been 
justified before? The answer depends upon an- 
other question. What description of sin is sup- 
posed? Is it such sin as is incompatible with the 
supposition of a man's continuing in faith; sin,, 
such as Involves the idea of his being no more a 
believer, no more "in Christ Jesus,'^'' but a withered 
and dead, and broken-ofF branch? Of this, we 
are free to say that, wherever such a case is founds 
if ever the person was in a justified state, it is 
now lost, and condemnation has ensued, and must 
be removed by a new effort of faith, precisely as 
if he had never believed before. But such is not 



144 

the description of sin on which the minds of those 
who hold the view, now in question, are fixed, 
when they speak of the necessity of a new justifi- 
cation. Of what kind, then, are the sins supposed? 
Why, the sins of the believer; of him who, though 
he sin, does not thereby cease to be a true Chris- 
tian, is not fallen from his union to Christ; is yet 
a pious, humble disciple. Well then, since ''There 
is not a just man on earth, that doeth good and sin- 
neth not,'^'^ we must all acknowledge the truth of 
what Hooker says, that "should we search all the 
generations of men since the fall of Adam, we 
could not find one man that hath done one action, 
which hath passed from him pure, without any 
stain or blemish at all;" that "the best things 
which we do, have somewhat in them to be par- 
doned;" that "the little fruit which we have in 
holiness is corrupt and unsound,'^ therefore, as the 
Christian is always doing, therefore he is always 
needing to be pardoned, ahvays sinning. Whether 
he sins only by a single thought, or by. an overt 
action, matters not to the present question, so that 
you only suppose him to be still a believer, still in 
Christ, Now, suppose it to be true, that his every 
sin requires a new justification; in other words, 
that each sin terminates his previous state of justi- 
fication, and so brings him under condemnation; 
for there is no middle ground. Then he must be 
continually incurring condemnation ; never an hour 
can there be, in which he must not be, many times, 
if not every minute, without justification, and con- 



145 

sequently under condemnation. But certainly this 
is not true. The state of the Christian does not 
involve such incessant and entire transitions from 
peace to wrath, and back again to peace. Then 
we ask again, concerning hiin whose every, even 
his best, deed, has something that needs to be par- 
doned, is he "in Christ Jesus 2'''^ By the suppo- 
sition, he is. But " there is no condemnation^ (says 
St. Paul) to them that are in Christ Jesus."* 
Though he sin, therefore he does not come under 
condemnation, and so needs not any new justifi- 
cation. All the while that he has reason to con- 
fess that he does what he ought not to do, and 
leaves undone what he ought to do, he remains in 
an uninterrupted state of justification; simply 
because he remains or "abides" in Christ; is still 
"found in him, not having on his own righteoui^- 
ness, but that w^hich is through the faith of Christ." 
There is no need of the renewal of justification, 
because there is no cessation of union to Christ, 
and of the imputation of his righteousness. If 
Noah can be said to have heen j^rogressivehj saved 
from the flood, because each successive torrent of 
the wrath of God against a perishing world, found 
him safe within the ark; if the man-slayer, who 
had fled to the city of refuge, may be said to have 
been progressively saved from the avenger of 
blood, because, each day, as the latter brought ac- 
cusation, and sought his life, he was found within 
the gates; then may the Christian be said to be 

* Rom. viii; 1. 
10 



146 

progressively justified; because, each time that 
the law lays sin to his charge, and seeks his con* 
demnation, he is found abiding in Christ the Ark, 
Christ the Refuge; still having on the righteous- 
ness of God by faith; still able to say: "It is God 
that justifieth ; who is he that condemneth ? " 
There is an ''ever-living" intercession of Christ, 
for the believer, as there is in the believer, through 
continual sin, an ever-living need of that interces- 
sion, and must be, on his part, an ever-living exer- 
cise of faith; keeping his case in the hands of 
that intercession. The believer lives by faith, 
though he be not always in the act of expressing 
his faith, by specific plea, or prayer. That living 
faith, it is, by which he abides in Christ, and 
shares in the continual oblation of his merit; so 
that there goes on, a continual imputation of the 
righteousness of Christ to the repenting and be- 
lieving sinner, which can only be interrupted by 
such a fall from grace, as would destroy faith, and 
so sever the union, which faith alone established, 
and faith alone continues, and thus make the 
Christian an apostate. 

But, here a question occurs: — Why, then, the 
siecessity, and where the propriety, of the Chris- 
tian's daily prayers for the forgiveness of sins; 
his continual pleading, again and again, of the 
merits of Christ, if he need no new justification? 
We ask, for reply, does the Christian believe that 
he comes into condemnation, loses justification, 
forfeits God's peace, every time he incurs the 



147 

charge of another failure in duty, and feels the 
need of again supplicating mercy, through Christ? 
Oh no! In his happiest states of mind — when 
most assured of the peace of God, he will most 
humbly and penitently confess that he daily and 
hourly sins, and will most earnestly entreat God's 
forgiving love. So then, from the fact of such 
exercises of the believer, no argument can be 
drawn, to prove his need of a new justification for 
each new sin. But the question returns-^- why, 
then, these pleas — this grasping, again and again, 
the merits of Christ? We answer, because it is 
thus he holds on to Ch rist, and retains a place in 
His mediation, and keeps his name in the list of 
those which Christ, in his ever-living intercession, 
confesses before His Father. It is for the purpose 
of clinging, the more vigorously, to the cross; of 
making more sure of his hold; and thus of feeling 
the more confidence of safety in Christ, and being 
able, the more assuredly, to answer the charge of 
a violated law. We can well suppose, that a ship- 
wrecked mariner, escaped to a rock, over which 
the surges of the tempest continually beat, though 
he do not once lose hold upon the refuge, will be 
continually renewing, and fastening again, his 
grasp, as each new billow swells, and menaces his 
ruin. So is it, with the Christian. He abides in 
Christ, not without the use of efforts of faith, and 
means of grace, any more than he first came to 
Christ without them. His first coming, and enter- 
ing into living union with hina^ was by an effort of 



148 

faith, rising in, and working by, prayer, "uttered 
or unexpressed." He mainlaiiis that same union, 
by the daily continuance of that same act of faith, 
working by the same spirit of prayer. He not 
only maintains the union, but he preserves his 
sense of its reality^ by the sam^ means. Let him 
restrain prayer, for a time, and though he should 
not cease to be, in heart, a Christian, but only to 
be a faithful Christian, he ceases to possess the 
comforting evidence that he is in Christ; he will 
not feel his hold upon the rock; his confidence is 
gone; he knows not what billow may drown him. 
For his consolation, then; for all that is precious 
in the witness of the Spirit that he is ''in Christ 
Jesus," for the preservation of his union to Christ, 
though not for any new justification, as if the for- 
mer were lost, must the Christian maintain a con- 
stant renewal of his confession of daily sin, and 
his pleadings of the daily and perpetual interces- 
sion of the righteousness of Christ. ''As we have 
received Christ,'''^ so we are directed to "walk in 
him?'^ We received him by an act of faith, fleeing 
unto him. We must "walk in him," by a continu- 
ance of the same act of faith, holding fast to him, 
as our "Life." 

It is well said, by Augustine, that our Justifca' 
Hon consists in the perpetual remission of sin — not 
in a remission, once for all, at the first act of our 
faith, as if all future, as well as all past sins, were 
then remitted — but a remission perpetual as the 
^ver-Uving Intercession of Christ for us;, not a 



149 

Justification that is interrupted, and must begin 
again with each new sin, any more than the Inter- 
cession of the Great High Priest is intermitted, 
and begins again with each new sin; but a justifi- 
cation which keeps pace with the need of it, just so 
long as we continue the exercise of that faith 
which makes us constant members of Christ, and* 
so makes us constant partakers of his interces- 
sion. The going up of the incense, out of the 
golden censer of our High Priest in Heaven, for 
us, is just as perpetual as the abiding in us of a- 
living faith in his Mediation. Two things always 
went together, in the earthly Sanctuary — the pray- 
ing of the people without, in the Court of the 
Tabernacle, and the entering of the High PriesE 
within the Veil, having the censer of incense, and 
the blood of atonement, to stand before the Mercy 
Seat; — he for the people, they in him. Thus are 
these two always united, in the Sanctuary on High;, 
and the outer Court of "the Israel of God" here on 
earth. A perpetual prayer ascends from the belie- 
ver; — all his faith is prayer, though not all his 
prayer, faith. While he is thus outside the veil; 
though joined with his faith, there be continual im- 
perfection, it does not break his peace; while the law 
is constantly laying charges against him, there is no 
condemnation; he continues justified, because his 
faith extends beyond the veil, and keeps his poor 
name in "the Lamb's Book of Life;" and all the 
while, the Great High Priest is standing, as St. 
John beheld him, in vision, "at the altar, before 



150 

the throne," " having a golden censer," with 
"much incense," offering it, "with the prayer of 
saints." So that when the law accuses the be- 
liever of sin, his answer is not, I have been 
already justified, in time past, but I am now for 
refuge^ clinging to the cross of Christ, who ever 
liveth to make intercession for me. Thus, nothing 
can separate a believer from the love of Christ, 
but the unbelief that would make him cease to be a 
believer. " If we walk in the light, the blood of 
Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin; that is, 
it never ceaseth to cleanse the Regenerate from 
the sins which they never cease, in some measure, 
or other, to commit. And if there were not a per- 
petual remission of our sins; or if the cleansing 
us from our sins by the blood of Christ, were not 
as perpetual as our commission of sin is, even the 
case of men Regenerate, would be lamentable" — 
Jackson'' s Works, iii, 292. 

"There are two sort of sins; (says Usher) one 
of ordinary incursion." The sins of the Chris- 
tianas daily course. ''These break no friendship 
between God and us; these only weaken our faithy 
and make us worse at ease. When a man hath 
a pardon, and it is almost obliterated, (its evidence) 
its letters almost worn out, that they cannot be 
read, he would be glad to have it renewed. Every 
sin puts a greiat blur upon thine old evidence, that 
thou canst not read it. It may be firm in heaven, 
and yet perhaps may be blurred, that thou canst 
not read it, and therefore, if thou wouldst get it 



151 

cleared again, thou must go to God, by prayer, and 
renew it again; so that whether our evidences be 
blurred, or whether it be that God will make us 
possess the iniquities of our youth, it is necessary 
for us to pray for the forgiveness of those sins 
which have been before forgiven?'' — Usher's Ser- 
mons, No. XV. 

It is one thing, for a child of God to incur the 
displeasure of his Heavenly Father; another, to 
forfeit His love; one thing, to lose the light of 
His countenance by sin, another, to lose the adop- 
tion of sons, and the promise of the inheritance; 
one thing to offend God, so that "Ae correcteth us^'^ 
and we come unto tribulation, because our comforts 
are withdrawn; another, to offend him, so that he 
withdraw his love from us, and we come into con- 
demnationj and abide under his wrath. Again, 
there is a vast difference between the parental 
chastening of our Heavenly Father, when His people 
sin, and He correcteth them "as a father doth the 
son in whom he delighteth," and the judicial wrath 
and curse of God, our Judge, under which all abide, 
who are not justified by faith, through Jesus Christ. 
The first, every son, whom God receiveth, must 
incur; because he is still a sinner, and needs chas- 
tisement, to make him partaker of more holiness. 
But such expressions of God's displeasure are no 
evidences that the Christian has need of a new 
justification for the sins that caused them. On the 
contrary, they are evidences of God's unabated 
love: For " whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth.'* 



152 

To the same effect, writes the venerable Bishop 
of Norwich, the learned and pious Reynolds, in 
his ''Life of Christ:" 

" When once we are incorporafe into Christ's 
i^ody, and made partakers of the New Covenant, 
though we are still under the Law's conduct^ in 
regard of obedience, (which is made sweet by 
grace;) yet we are not under the Law's male- 
diction. So that though sin, in a believer, be a 
transgression of the Law, and doth certainly incur- 
God's displeasure; yet it doth not de facto (though 
it do de merito) subject him to wrath and ven- 
geance. There is a displeasure, which is but for a 
moment; a wrath, which doth only sing and blow 
upon the soul, and then away; such, the faithful 
themselves, after some bold adventure into the 
ways of sin, may have experience of. And there 
is a wrath which is constant, permanent, intimately 
and everlastingly adherent unto the soul, w^hich 
will seize only upon unbelievers. All sins do, of 
themselves, deserve damnation, but none do de 
facto infer damnation, v^ithout unbelief This was 
that great provocation in the v/ilderness, which 
kept the people out of the Land of Promise. 
'• They entered not in^ because of unbelief P " Take 
heed, lest there be, in any of you, an evil heart of 
,,un belief, in departing from the living God." — Rey- 
nolds^ Works, pp. 190-1. 



153 

D. 

Instrumental Office of Faith — page 105. 

Matthias Lauterwald, a minister of Upper Huri' 
gary, well esteemed by the Reformers, but fond of 
refinements and contention, held that repentance, 
love, and obedience, are all included in the faith 
that justifies, and are thus, conjointly with it, the 
means of procuring the benefit of redemption. On 
this, Melancthon delivered the judgment of the 
University of Wittemberg — in which he says: 
"Though true faith, or reliance an the Saviour, 
cannot exist in thosG who go on securely in their 
sins, and are destitute of contrition, yet contrition 
and new obedience are not the means of applying 
grace. Contrition necessarily precedes; but whea 
it is asked, whether as a cause or a means? we 
answer, as neither; but rather as a wound, or the 
feeling of a wound, precedes a cure. The prom- 
ise is embraced and applied, only by faith, and not 
on account of our contrition, or the virtues that 
follow after." ^'Lauterwald's corruption of the 
doctrine does not differ from the synecdoche of the 
monks, who say that faith justifies us as being the 
originating principle of love and good works. But 
the fact is this: nothing but faith lays hold on the 
promise. In this, faith differs from all other 
works, that it alone embraces the promise, and re^ 
ceives the blessing, as unmerited. Other works 
offer something to God; nor can the application of 
the blessing, by means of works, be understood in 
11 



154 

any other wa}', than that they effect it by some 
merit which they possess. Lauterwald, therefore, 
while he rejects the name of merit, retains the 
thing, and imposes on himself, by vain specula- 
tion. To contrition, grace is promised, as healing 
to a wound; faith applies the remedy; but in no 
sense can it be said, that pardon is promised, in 
consideration of the works to follow." 

Again, in a letter to Brentius: '' We are justified 
by faith alone, not because of that grace being the 
root of all virtues, but because it lays hold on 
Christ, for whose sake we are accepted, whatever 
be the amount of our renovation — which, indeed, 
must necessarily follow, but is not the thing that 
gives peace to the conscience. Love, therefore, 
(though it is the fnl filling of the law) is not that 
which justifies, but faith only — not as constituting 
any perfection in us, but as apprehending (or em- 
bracing) the Saviour. We are righteous, (or jus- 
tified) not because of our fulfilling the law, or of 
our love, or of our renovation, (though these are 
the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us) but for the sake 
of Christ — whom we apprehend by faith alone." 
"Believe me, (he adds) the controversy, concern- 
ing this subject, is momentous." — Scotl'^s Continu- 
ation of Milner,voL [[. pp. 117 — 122. 

On the error above opposed by Melancthon, 
Scott adds: "It was a species of error, which, 
though it much agitated the Protestant Church, at 
that time, has since spread its influence much mora 
widely, and been much more permanent. It bor- 



155 

dered closely, on what was maintained by the 
more temperate Papists — and it is virtually the 
same which is still supported by great names, 
among ourselves, though it could never, to any 
considerable extent, make its way among Protes- 
tants of the age of the reformation." — pp. 116 — 17. 
Tillotson is acknowledged, by the British Critic, 
to have fallen into this error. "lie has blended 
with the essence of justifying faith, its inseparable 
concomitants, or rather, with faith in its act of 
justifying, things which, though they are a part of 
true faith, do not belong to it, in that act." This 
will explain, perhaps, some of the meaning of Til- 
lotson's project for a new hook of Homilies, in addi- 
tion to the old, in which, Burnet tells us, were to 
be Homilies for the six Sundays of Whitsunday, 
on Justification J containing a close examination of 
some expressions in the first book of Homilies, 
" that seemed to carry Justification hy faith only, to a 
height that wanted some mitigation.''' ^ In reference 
to the error, above mentioned, the Critic writes — 
" To say that our .repentance and obedience are to 
be respected in the act of justifying faith, in the* 
same way as our trust and confidence in the meri- 
torious cause of our pardon, is a mode of speaking,, 
which does not sufficiently distinguish between the 
Source of Life and the path to life." The same 
writer, considers the language of the Homily on 
Salvation, quoted in the Charge, pages 106 and 107;, 

* Burnet's Sermons and Essay, 1713, p. 193— whose 
account of faith harmonizes with that of Tillotson. 



I 



156 

as containing " the concurrent doctrine of the Refor- 
mation^ in expounding St. Paul, as briefly expressed 
in that sentence of Chiilingworth, Faith alone jus- 
lifes, hit not that faith which is alone^ 

Such were the views of the British Critic, in the 
beginning of 1838 — See p. 121 of xlv. It has 
since become the special organ of the, so called, 
"Oxford Divinity." Probably, therefore, the new 
Editor would prefer to say, in the words of that 
system, '.'that Justification is gained by obedience 
in the shape of faith. '''^ — Pusey's Letter to the Bish- 
op of Oxford; App. p. 20. 

The doctrine of the Church may be further 
illustrated, by the following citation from Bishop 
Beveridge : " The Socinians hold, that justifying or 
saving faith is nothing else but obedience, sincerely 
performed, to the Law of God; so that good works 
constitute the very form and essence of it.* But 
this contradicts the very notion of faith, in gene- 
ral." Faith and obedience "differ, as much as tho 
cause and effect do: for faith is the instrumental 
cause, whereby we are enabled to perform obedi- 
ence — and they have different objects in view, for 
obedience respects only the commands, but faith 
looks only to the promises of God, made to us in 
Jesus Christ. Hence, though faith be always ac- 
companied by obedience and good works, — yet 
in the matter of our Justification, it is always op- 
posed against them by St. Paul. — Rom. iii, 2d; 
Gal. ii, 16."— Sermons; No. 134. 

* This is ^^ obedience in the shape of faith,^ 

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